In the current "post-copyright" era dominated by AI, yet another company has launched a blatant playable imitation of a well-known copyrighted video game—this time it's DecartAI's Oasis world model, reminiscent of Minecraft, but with a resolution and frame rate more akin to Nintendo 64 titles like Ocarina of Time (20 FPS, 360p) rather than any contemporary version of Minecraft. Even fan-made ports for platforms like the GameCube and Dreamcast outperform this!Compounding the issue are numerous AI errors that render intricate gameplay impossible, including a total absence of object permanence, where actions like digging a hole simply teleport you back to ground level. Furthermore, no environmental features are lasting, leading one to question the appeal of a survival-building RPG under such circumstances. Oasis, created in partnership with Etched, isn’t strictly a commercial product.

In fact, comments on Etched's Twitter suggest it may soon be open-sourced. It raises eyebrows how they are permitted to open-source and distribute code that so transparently copies (and trains on) an existing video game. Additionally, this project utilizes the open-source Minecraft training dataset from OpenAI, known as Minecraft Video PreTraining (VPT), which was trained using 70, 000 hours of IDM-labeled online video. While some AI enthusiasts celebrate innovations like AI Counter-Strike: GO and Doom as steps forward in gaming, it’s evident to those who are observant that the most practical, efficient, and sensible choice for the foreseeable future will be actual game engines operating on real hardware. The claim of having a "game" while lacking a game engine, game logic, or workable code seems to overlook what makes games enjoyable—or even intelligible—especially since these initiatives rely entirely on established video games to draw inspiration from.