The maker of one of Roblox's top games is taking brainrot to court. Developer Spyder Games filed a complaint in a California court on Thursday, which has been reviewed by Aftermath, over what it calls a copy of its record-breaking Steal A Brainrot.
Steal A Brainrot is consistently within the top three games on Roblox. It's a simple game: You collect and steal brainrots from other players. It's kind of like capture the flag, but instead of one or two flags, there's a lot. And they're also not flags—they're brainrots. Brainrots in Steal A Brainrot are based off Italian brainrot, which is a bunch of weird, absurd memes, like a shark wearing three Nike sneakers. (He's Tralalero Tralala.) Or it's a cappuccino mug that's got a ballerina body. (Ballerina Cappuccina.) The brainrots in Steal A Brainrot are based off these memes. By stealing brainrots, you earn currency to upgrade your base and thus defend your brainrots.
Attorney Adam Starr is tasked with explaining all this to the court. He describes it in the complaint as "a treasure hunt in a world filled with unique 'brainrots,' which are based on silly internet meme characters."
"The brainrots march slowly in a line down a red carpet that runs through the center of the arena of game play," Starr writes. "Players capture the brainrots and take them to their base, which is like a mini jail on the edges of the arena, to earn virtual currency. Different brainrots have differing values, depending upon their rarity. Meanwhile, players can steal each other’s brainrots from their respective bases. The virtual currency a player earns from the brainrots can be used to upgrade their bases or unlock special abilities (like grabbing brainrots or escaping thieves more easily)."
It's absurd, and that's kind of the point. Steal A Brainrot is exceptionally popular. In October, it had 25.4 million people logged into the game at one time, surpassing both Grow A Garden, another supremely popular Roblox game, and Fortnite's peak of 15.3 million concurrent players.
Steal A Brainrot’s playerbase goes up when there's an update, but typically decreases, though not enough to take it out of the top three Roblox games. There are more than 619,000 players in the game at the time of writing. The game often goes viral on TikTok and other platforms because its chaos is good content—like kids crying over brainrot. All this is to say that Steal A Brainrot is really popular, which makes it really lucrative for developers earning money by selling items and through Roblox's creator rewards program.
The developers have Steal A Brainrot copyrighted, as of August. There are a lot of Steal A Brainrot copycats or offshoot games on Roblox and Fortnite. At issue is a game on Fortnite’s user-created platform called Stealing Brainrots, which Starr said in the complaint is infringing. (Fortnite also has a very popular Steal A Brainrot clone of its own, Steal The Brainrot, but that game is officially licensed; Stealing Brainrots is much less popular, with just hundreds of players.)
“Our client takes its intellectual property rights seriously and brought this action to protect its work," Starr said in a statement to Aftermath. "We always prefer to resolve these matters cooperatively, but when necessary we will take appropriate legal steps to safeguard our IP.”
Fortnite's creator program pays out money to developers based on user engagement, but Epic Games will let users create and sell in-game items directly in their games starting in December—a new revenue stream.
Starr, representing the Steal A Brainrot makers, says in the complaint that Stealing Brainrots was uploaded in July and copies Steal A Brainrot's "protectable expressions," like its artwork, objects, design, and game elements. "[The similarities] are the result of willful infringement by defendant in an effort to steal the market for plaintiff's game," he writes.
Spyder Games wants the court to take Stealing Brainrots down and to receive damages and profits related to the infringed content.
Aftermath has reached out to Stealing Brainrots developer, identified in the complaint as Thomas van der Voort of the United Arab Emirates, for comment.
Correction 10/24/25, 12:10 p.m. ET: The original version of this article incorrectly reported the name of the allegedly offending game. After publishing, attorney Starr reached out to clarify that the wrong Fortnite island code was provided in the suit; that game, Steal The Brainrot, "is an officially licensed game and is not the subject of the lawsuit." We've updated the story with player data from Stealing Brainrots.