Clones have been a fixture in the games industry forever. For every Mario Bros there’s a Giana Sisters, for every Stardew Valley there’s a Fields of Mistria, and for every Needle In A Haystack Simulator there’s a A Needle In a Haystack, or Needle in a Haystack, or Needle In A Haystack, or Needle In A Haystack – A Time For Goats, or Story of The Needle In a Haystack.
The total slopification of Steam continues apace and the recent spray of haystack games is the purest manifestation of this phenomenon. The first—as far as I can tell—was Needle In A Haystack Simulator, which is scheduled for release in Q4 2026. According to developers Studio Bitdot, a playtest in August attracted around 23,000 players, which is an astonishing figure for a game about finding a needle in a haystack.
I’m not surprised that Needle In A Haystack Simulator is popular, mind you. Games about meaningless and repetitive labour are all the rage. Needle In A Haystack Simulator hybridises sorting and incremental games: the player must manually sift through hay to find the needle, but sifting will also unearth items that can be sold for profit, all the better to invest in more efficient hay sorting technology. It sounds arduous and annoying, but there is, regrettably, a market for it.
At least two needle in a haystack games have beaten Studio Bitdot to release. Needle In A Haystack – A Time For Goats released on September 19 and, according to developer Red Key Games, had sold a thousand copies by September 26. Upon release, the studio wrote in an update that it was aware of the sudden onslaught of needle in haystack games. “We decided to set out and make this game and are very aware that since then, multiple hay games have surfaced and tweets have gotten super popular,” the studio wrote.
“We want to let everyone know that this is a crazy coincidence and not us copying ideas. We were already months into production when this all happened”. The studio goes on to share its SteamDB data as proof. Then, just yesterday, the studio added a bizarre new first-person shooter endgame, presumably to differentiate it from other haystack games. (“Dude, what are you thinking??” wrote user djcassar in response to this free expansion. “It is a completely different play style to what people are buying the game are intending to experience. Get rid of it!”)
The other already-released haystack games came out on September 25 and is called, creatively, A Needle In A Haystack: Sorting Game. According to Steam reviews it is a substandard piece of software and I am not surprised.
But Needle In A Haystack Simulator has very many other competitors on the horizon: the demo for Needle In A Haystack, which releases in full on September 30, apparently attracted 20,000 players. Elsewhere, Story of The Needle In a Haystack is scheduled to release on November 28 and has a live demo.
Here’s a list, which I doubt is exhaustive:
In response to a viral X post surfacing the haystack slop phenomenon, the creator of Needle in the Haystack Simulator, going by the name Nas, offered their apologies. “As the dev of the one that went viral, i would like to formally apologise to the steam storefront,” they wrote. When someone expressed sympathy, Nas didn’t welcome it: “Don’t feel bad, it’s the ultimate slop game. I have no complaints.”
The creator does seem to approach the whole affair with a modicum of humor (they used their game to spoof Wolverine, for instance). But the copycats, it’s wise to assume, are in it for the cold hard cash. It’s not rare for joke games to spawn unjokeful clones—A Game About Digging A Hole had countless copycats, as did Banana—but the haystack game dovetails so neatly with the sort slop boom that there’s every possibility one, two or several of these haystack games will make a tidy profit for the shovelware merchants responsible for them.
And, I mean, I can pretend to be polite and open minded about this, but… finding a needle in a haystack? I can understand wanting to take every opportunity to dissociate from the reality of 2026, but there are over 100,000 games on Steam.
But whether the game sucks or not, it does highlight the risk of showing off your bizarre new indie game on social media: if it goes viral, or people take to it, the churn industry will be paying attention.
Top Steam games by revenue (September 15 – 22)
|
Rank |
Game |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Wardogs |
|
2 |
EA Sports FC 27 |
|
3 |
Counter-Strike 2 |
|
4 |
PUBG: Battlegrounds |
|
5 |
Dota 2 |
|
6 |
Apex Legends |
|
7 |
Marvel Rivals |
|
8 |
Aniimo |
|
9 |
Diablo 4 |
|
10 |
Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter |
Wardogs’ dominance continues: according to Bulkhead the game has sold three million copies since preorders opened on August 11. Considering how difficult it is to launch a live service multiplayer game in 2026—countless have tried and gone out of business—it’s a big win for the UK studio.
FC 27 comes in at number two but do note this is for preorders only: the chart takes in September 15—22 and EA’s latest football sim didn’t release until September 25. In other words, expect it to hit number one next week.
Amusingly, considering how popular and lucrative the FC (formerly FIFA series) is, EA Canada and EA Romania have employed generative AI during development: “Generative AI may have been used in creating pre-rendered or live-generated content for this game,” the disclosure reads. “All such content is the result of a human-led artistic and creative process.”
The only real surprise this week is how well Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter has done: I know this series has its audience but I didn’t expect PC gamers to show up so strongly for it. It’s currently sitting on over a thousand “overwhelmingly positive” reviews. PC Gamer’s Sean Martin dug it.
Last week’s Steam deep cuts
