Lookalike games are officially turning on each other. The developer of Needle In A Haystack, a co-op game clearly based on viral game Needle In A Haystack Simulator, claims that the developer of A Game About Needle In A Haystack, another would-be trend cash-in, not only copied the same idea as them but also literally stole their code line for line.

This stems from a now-deleted Steam discussion post for A Game About Needle In A Haystack. This post is gone because the whole game was seemingly removed from Steam about nine days ago, according to SteamDB's update history. An archived version of the store page is still viewable via Wayback Machine.

Fortunately, a post on the videogames subreddit captured this forum message, which was written by Steam user Jahvin, whose profile confirms that they're in a group with Needle In A Haystack developer NoGlyph and are also part of the SteamWorks Development page.

"Stolen code from our game," the post reads. "This game stole our code and thought nobody would notice. I'm the developer of Needle In A Haystack (NoGlyph), another game in this genre, so weigh this review with that in mind."

A brief pause: I wouldn't call finding needles in haystacks a genre, or even a subgenre. It is, at best, one funny idea now surrounded by so many flagrant ripoffs that the creator of the original game joked about adding a mode where you sift through stacks of boxed copycats instead. You can call Vampire Survivors-style roguelikes a subgenre, for example, whether that's Survivors-likes or bullet heaven.

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