I’m a solo dev who just got death threats and review bombed over AI art in my free incremental game. I'm ready to quit.
I’ve spent thousands of hours over the past few months building a free, browser-based incremental game. I have a full-time job and normal life responsibilities, so this has been entirely a passion project fueled by late nights and weekends.
For context on the game itself: it is heavily mechanics-driven. The bulk of my work has been strictly technical: coding, playtesting, building out the math for the progression curves, balancing the economy, and creatively designing the core concepts. It’s a long-form game with over a month of active playtime required to progress through the current content. The logical creativity and the backend mechanics are the heart and soul of the project.
Because I have zero artistic ability, the art was always a secondary concern. I wanted the game to have a visual UI rather than just being a spreadsheet, so I attempted to do the drawings myself in Photoshop, but leaned heavily on AI assistance to get them to a presentable state. I’m not selling an art book; I’m providing a free mechanical playground for people who enjoy number-crunching and incremental progression.
Up until now, the reception has been incredible. I currently have over 1,000 daily active players and a highly active, vibrant Discord community of testers who actually care about the gameplay loop and provide feedback on the balancing.
Everything was fine until I posted the game to a new platform a few days ago. The anti-AI crowd found it, and the response has been completely unhinged. They didn't engage with the gameplay, the mechanics, or the hundreds of hours of coding. They instantly review-bombed the game to the ground and started coming at me directly with actual death threats in my DMs.
I’m just a solo dev sharing a free game that I built because I love the genre. I didn't steal anyone's job, I didn't charge money for "stolen" art, and I clearly focused 99% of my development time on the code and math. But right now, the sheer toxicity of these antis makes me feel terrible. It has entirely drained my motivation, to the point where I am seriously considering just abandoning the project and the community that actually enjoys it.
Is this really the standard reality for solo devs now? You either have the budget to commission thousands of dollars in 2D assets for a free passion project, or you get subjected to death threats for using AI to patch your weak spots?