Publisher Alliance Arts and developer WHO YOU cancelled the public demo of their game for the October 2026 Steam Next Fest on 16 October, three days before the festival opened. One of their two stated reasons, given in a Steam announcement, was the fear that AI tools could be used to copy the game before launch. It is sold as Drunken Goddess Reflux on the English Steam store and as PUKEY GODDESS SHOT TRICK on the Japanese store page.
Lottery-drawn Discord sessions instead of a public demo
The demo was due on Monday 19 October. The announcement, posted at 10:23 UTC on 16 October and signed by Alliance Arts Inc., replaces it with a closed online play session for a limited number of people. Players join the game’s official Discord server, apply through a form and agree in advance to rules on posting and streaming footage. Participants are drawn by lottery, and feedback is collected on Discord afterwards. The publisher apologised to players for the short notice.
Valve’s Steamworks page for the October 2026 edition sets the festival for 19–26 October, starting at 10:00 PDT. It requires participating games to have a demo that is “publicly playable by the time the festival begins”, and tells developers to opt out if their plans change. A closed Discord session does not meet that requirement, so the game effectively gives up the festival’s main promotional slot.
Streaming rules and AI clones
The announcement gives two reasons. The team had planned to publish the demo with limits on gameplay videos and streams, but says it cannot currently manage or enforce those limits properly. It is also concerned that the demo’s look and gameplay could be quickly imitated with AI or other tools, and that such imitations could reach the market before the original game.
Japanese outlet AUTOMATON reported a follow-up post on X from WHO YOU producer and scenario writer Fuyuki Hayashi, who said that releasing a demo widely now carries kinds of risk that did not exist a few years ago. AUTOMATON also lists the core team: lead game designer Masakazu Tokuoka, art director and character designer odyk, and composer Aiobahn.
The game’s Steam page describes a drinking survival game built on Russian roulette: the player trades shots with a demon and tries to get her drunk enough to give up her soul, while the rules break down as the drinking goes on. Steam lists English, Japanese and Simplified Chinese, carries mature-content warnings, and shows the release date as “to be announced”. AUTOMATON reported a planned 8 December 2026 release at 666 yen, which we have not confirmed on Steam.
Earlier clone cases on Steam
Copycats on Steam are not new; what this team describes is a shorter gap between a public demo and a clone. Inven Global grouped the cancellation with two earlier cases. Studio Bitdot added the word “ORIGINAL” to its Steam artwork after similarly named imitations of Needle In A Haystack Simulator appeared, and the creator of Family Time filed a DMCA takedown against a near-identical store page. In those cases the clone appeared after a game went viral. Alliance Arts is trying not to give copiers a playable reference in the first place.
The cost is real: demos and Next Fest traffic are among the few levers small teams have for gaining wishlists, and a closed playtest limits who sees the game. Alliance Arts has not said whether a public demo will follow later.