Digital Sun, the studio behind Moonlighter, has changed its plans for the first public test of ReVamp, its upcoming Dracula-themed “tower defensevania”. Instead of releasing the build widely through Steam, the developer will begin with a much smaller playtest hosted through its Discord community.
The decision follows a wave of games being reverse-engineered, cloned and published before their official releases. Digital Sun says the recent capabilities of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 have made distributing an unfinished but playable build a far greater risk than it was previously.
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The model can reportedly decompile a game’s code and reconstruct it in a way that once demanded months or even years of determined programming work. The resulting reproductions have also been sufficiently functional to run in web browsers, increasing concern among developers whose games are still in production.
That concern is particularly relevant to ReVamp. Digital Sun’s base-building game, set in a Dracula-inspired world, is not scheduled for release until March 2027. A playtest that would previously have been temporarily available to the public can now potentially be copied and redistributed long before the finished game arrives.
“We’re keeping ReVamp’s first playtest small for now. Here’s why.”
pic.twitter.com/VVBm5hoBeF — Digital Sun
Players who requested access through Steam have been told about the change. Digital Sun hopes to open the broader playtest around January, while registrations for the smaller Discord test remain available ahead of October 29.
The studio also stressed why early access matters to independent developers:
“Showing games early is how indies get seen and find the fans who keep us going, so we hope platforms keep strengthening protections for original work.”
Digital Sun’s decision could have implications well beyond one game. Alliance Arts, the developer of Drunken Goddess Reflux, recently cancelled plans for a Next Fest demo because of similar concerns. Steam’s upcoming Next Fest is still expected to feature more than 8,000 demos—over twice the number included in the March event—but the security question may influence how studios share them.
Why public playtests are becoming harder to manage
A demo usually exposes only a limited section of a game, whereas a longer playtest may reveal much more of its underlying systems and content. Developers could once publish these builds for a set period before removing them. The new risk is that a playable test might be copied, reconstructed and made available elsewhere before the intended launch.
Studios planning their own testing strategy will need to weigh community feedback and visibility against the possibility of unauthorised replication. The same practical caution applies to anyone evaluating an arcade machine buying guide: understand what software and hardware are being made available, and how that access is protected.
As developers respond, the industry’s approach to demos and playtests may become more selective. For enthusiasts interested in the hardware side of gaming, RETROCADE also covers arcade machines, arcade parts and controls, and arcade industry videos.
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