The AI video game clone explosion continues at pace. Now, someone has made Minecraft playable inside X / Twitter with working multiplayer. X user jaivin used AI to make Mojang’s Minecraft playable inside posts on Elon Musk’s social network, and is letting people buy in-game sponsorships with cryptocurrency.
“Tweetcraft is a block game in a post: every world is a link on X, and everyone who opens it plays together,” reads the official blurb. “Put your ad at the top of the server list, in a world’s sponsor leaderboard, or your logo on the Block Dragon.”
So, what’s going on here? Essentially, “Tweetcraft” is a custom browser-based Minecraft clone where you generate a shared world and post its unique link on X / Twitter, which acts as a shared entry point. Anyone who clicks on the link joins the same real-time multiplayer session. The game itself renders in your browser.
This “port” is, obviously, unauthorized, and will no doubt draw the attention of Microsoft’s lawyers sooner rather than later. Jaivin’s launch post has had 7.4 million views already. Various follow-up posts detail an explosion of popularity as people try it out.
Perhaps in a bid to downplay any potential trademark or copyright infringement, jaivin has called the game “Tweetcraft,” although it’s clearly Minecraft in shape and form. Jaivin also insisted that “Tweetcraft uses none of Minecraft’s assets and is not associated with Mojang or Microsoft.”
Responses are similar to those we’ve seen over the last two weeks amid this AI-powered video game clone and “game-merging” mod explosion, which has spawned a number of viral gameplay clips of famous video game franchises mashed together. There’s a mix of excitement and disgust, with some saying a clampdown is inevitable.
“The name is brilliant because now you can lose two separate trademark lawsuits,” one person said of Tweetcraft.
“The ‘I do not own this music video’ description when uploading a music video on YouTube defense,” another said.
October has already seen GTA 5 and the original version of Halo on Xbox made playable on a browser, with more surely to come. The GTA 5 clone was hit by a takedown, as was a Fallout: New York game that was released in-browser.
Clearly, this Whack-a-Mole between IP owner and AI-generated video game isn’t sustainable, so the question will be what the video game industry does long term to prevent this sort of thing happening in the first place. Indeed, can it do anything? With AI models becoming increasingly powerful, the time it takes for unauthorized versions of established video games to appear outside of official platforms will reduce potentially to just hours or even minutes. With GTA 6 releasing on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S only, how long will it take for someone to use AI to make it playable on PC via a browser?
Wesley is IGN’s Managing Editor. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
