A weekend project turned controversy: Pierre-Louis Biojout, founder of the Y-Combinator startup NanoCorp, has released a browser game called Tenderloin Night Shift via Vibe Coding. It is set in the Tenderloin, a district of San Francisco known for homelessness and open drug use. According to PC Gamer, the game drew heavy criticism from residents and city politicians.
What is Tenderloin Night Shift about?
On October 13, Biojout wrote in a now-deleted X-post that San Francisco hadn't gotten a grip on the Tenderloin, so he had "monetized" it – as a Call of Duty-style zombie shooter set on real city streets. He claimed to have already earned $300 from in-game advertising. According to reports from the SF Chronicle and KRON4, the "zombies" included, among others, a hunched fentanyl user and a Black security guard.
Why are residents criticizing the game?
Jennifer Friedenbach of the SF Coalition on Homelessness accused the developer of marketing the dehumanization of predominantly Black and Latino residents of the city's poorest neighborhood. Another founder wrote that it's about people struggling with addiction, not zombies. Biojout claims he did not intend to depict shooting real people; tech employees also appear as characters. The game appears to have been removed from the NanoCorp website. Some commentators even celebrated the message.
What does this mean for Vibe Coding in the gaming industry?
This case demonstrates how quickly AI can assemble a release-ready game – complete with advertising and monetization, but without editorial or ethical review. From our perspective, the problem lies less in the technology itself than in the lack of sensitivity. We recently covered a similar issue with the Vibe-Coded Epic Games Launcher preview.
Source: PC Gamer
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