(Bloomberg) — In the popular video game Steal A Brainrot, the object is petty theft. But now that the internet is awash with knockoffs of the runaway Roblox Corp. (RBLX) hit, its makers are defending their turf.
Since November, Steal A Brainrot developers Spyder Games and Speedy Simulator Gaming have filed at least four lawsuits against alleged imposters.
In one case, a legal representative knocked on the door of the listed address for Bella Thomas, the owner of the website stealbrainrotio.io that hosts 12 allegedly nearly identical versions of the original game, to serve her with a legal complaint. A person at the Atlanta home wouldn’t open the door and refused to answer any questions, according to a legal motion filed in early March.
“Ignoring me will not make this go away,” the plaintiffs’ general counsel wrote in a text to a number associated with Thomas, according to a complaint filed against her in San Francisco federal court.
A representative for Spyder and Speedy declined to comment. Thomas didn’t respond to requests for comment. In a notice to Google to prevent her website from being removed from search results that was included in the legal filings, Thomas described the site as mainly an online game directory and asserted that it “does not infringe upon any copyright laws or violate any intellectual property rights.”
Steal A Brainrot broke records last year after its launch, attracting as many as 24 million simultaneous players — roughly the population of Florida. In the game, players purchase colorful characters called brainrots as they march down a red carpet. You earn money as long as you keep the characters, but if someone steals your brainrot, the cash flow disappears. The object is to collect as many rare and valuable characters as possible, and to earn a pile of virtual cash.
“That gameplay loop is addictive,” said Arturo Perez, chief executive officer of Kluge Interactive, which just published the Galaxy of Brainrots. “It’s very simple, but you can get stuck for hours.”
Since its May 2025 release, Steal A Brainrot has earned an estimated $64 million in real money from in-game purchases like swords and invisibility cloaks, according to data from Romonitor, which analyzes Roblox data. Now, Speedy and Spyder claim an army of clones threatens that success.
Hundreds of competing titles like Cut Grass for Brainrots and Survive LAVA for Brainrots have flooded Roblox, which relies on third-parties to create games. More are released every day, some seducing thousands of players before dying down. Lots marry the brainrot theme to previously successful Roblox games. Grow a Beanstalk for Brainrots, for example, evokes the megahit Grow A Garden.
Roblox, which has 144 million daily active users, allows developers to design and publish their own games, which players can access for free across any platform. The ease of making content, as well as the popularity of relatively simple games, allows publishers to jump quickly on trends with similar themes. The company takes about 70% of the revenue players generate in those games using the virtual Robux currency. It paid out $1.5 billion to game creators last year, many of whom are teenagers.
The brainrot at the core of the game stemmed from popular teen slang to describe trivial or uninspiring online content. The term manifested itself on TikTok, YouTube and other social media in a wave of viral AI-generated memes in early 2025 consisting of absurd animal-object hybrids often with faux-Italian voiceovers. Steal a Brainrot was itself inspired by a game called Steal a Character, according to a post from developer Sam Brakta, who goes by the name SpyderSammy online. Brakta said he acquired the rights to the earlier game and improved upon it.
Spyder and Speedy don’t claim ownership of the brainrots themselves, because they’re based on AI-generated memes and therefore aren’t protected by copyright, according to the legal complaints. Spyder, headquartered in Louisiana, and Speedy, based in Wyoming, hold a copyright for the Steal A Brainrot game, which covers its visual and textual content, layout and design of menus, in-game objects, artwork and overall aesthetic.
The similarities between the games on Thomas’ website and the original Steal A Brainrot reflect a “deliberate and calculated copying of the game’s original creative elements and distinctive design,” the plaintiffs wrote. Thomas’ site is, according to the complaint, “the product of willful infringement aimed at capturing the market that plaintiffs built.”
Speedy and Spyder claim statutory damages from Thomas’ site would be at least $1.8 million in addition to attorney fees.
Aside from Thomas and her website, other suits target people who have created replicas of the game and distributed them through the Apple (AAPL) App Store and Google (GOOG) Play or uploaded a knockoff version to Fortnite Creative, Epic Games Inc.’s video-game platform. Brainrot-style games have mushroomed on nearly every gaming platform with user-generated content, including Epic’s Fortnite and Meta Platforms Inc.’s (META) Horizon Worlds. Perez’s Galaxy of Brainrots game on Roblox hasn’t been the target of the Spyder and Speedy lawsuits, though an earlier game on Horizon Worlds was served with a cease-and-desist.
Epic has removed brainrot-style games from Fortnite, according to the company. “Creating islands in popular genres is allowed in Fortnite, but directly copying is not,” Liz Markman, a spokesperson, said.
It’s common for video games to replicate each other’s basic mechanics, according to Connor Richards, a lawyer for Odin Law and Media, which represents Roblox creators. But game mechanics aren’t typically protected by copyright. Fortnite, for example, was the culmination of a survival-shooter trend kicked off by PUBG: Battlegrounds, which itself was inspired by the film Battle Royale.
“So the question is, have you created a similar game because you started from someone else’s original work, like stealing their source code or characters? Or did you just build a similar absurdist game around a similar mechanic you coded yourself?” Richards asks.
Roblox games are quick to develop, sometimes taking just a few months, Richards said. So developers can try to put the game up and try to make a quick buck. If they face legal challenges, “they just take the game down and move on.”
As more game developers flock to Roblox in the hopes of becoming kid-millionaires, Steal A Brainrot serves as a launching pad for some people’s careers.
Brainrot is among the longest-lasting Roblox trends so far — partially the result of viral TikTok videos of kids crying over stolen characters. “We’re now in this era where everyone is making brainrot games,” said Forrest Waldron, a popular Roblox YouTuber known as KreekCraft.
It helps that brainrot is a money-maker. In February, Waldron’s company released its own take on the genre, Sail For Brainrots, which earned tens of thousands of dollars in a few weeks, he said.
Roblox has always been trend-driven, according to Waldron. “Kids don’t like change,” he said, referring to Roblox’s primary audience. “A game comes out that’s really popular and kids just want more of it.”
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