🔍 Read the full analysis: The Debate Over AI Recreating Games And Stomping On IP on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said AI companies should protect both their own and others’ intellectual property, responding to an IGN question about Anthropic and OpenAI. He described AI-enabled piracy as a creative concern rather than a financial threat, while saying piracy could become more challenging. Neither company had publicly responded to his remarks by the source’s stated November 14 cutoff.
Take-Two Interactive chief executive Strauss Zelnick said AI companies should protect other people’s intellectual property as well as their own, in a November 9 interview with IGN about tools that could help users recreate games. He described the risk to Take-Two as a creative concern, not a financial threat, and did not accuse either Anthropic or OpenAI of a specific act involving a Take-Two game.
Zelnick was responding to an interviewer’s question about Anthropic’s newly added instruction for its coding agent, Claude Code, and whether OpenAI should adopt a similar rule. “I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else’s,” he said. He added that it seemed “ironic” for companies in the intellectual-property business to “stomp on someone else’s IP and hope that yours is protected.” The names of Anthropic and OpenAI appeared in the question; Zelnick’s answer did not identify a product, a cloned game, or a particular case.
His comments followed a separate question about AI-assisted game piracy. Zelnick told IGN: “I don’t think it’s a financial matter, in terms of a threat to our business. I do think it’s a creative matter.” He said Take-Two and Rockstar were focused on protecting their intellectual property and delivering the experience Rockstar intended. On Take-Two’s earnings call the same day, he said piracy would become “more of a challenge” and that the company was “enhancing our technical defenses and enhancing our legal activities appropriately.”
Anthropic’s Claude Code rule, in place since version 2.1.317, published November 2, tells the model not to create “a recreation of a specific existing game,” including one using its name, characters, art, music, levels, or look, even if it is renamed or described as original. Anthropic grounds the restriction in its usage policy against infringing third-party intellectual property. OpenAI’s usage policy also bars attempts to infringe others’ intellectual-property rights, but the source reports finding no game-specific instruction in the open-source code of OpenAI’s Codex CLI agent.
AI coding agents and existing games · as of Nov 14, 2026
Prompt in, game out: where the line runs
Three example requests (illustrative, not real cases) and what each vendor’s published rules say about them.
- Example request
“An original racing game with my own art”own idea, own assets
Claude Code (Anthropic)AllowedRule text: build original games and games from the user’s own designs and assets
Codex / policies (OpenAI)No objectionNothing in the published usage policies against it
- Example request
“A heist game with mechanics like [a named hit]”a game named as a reference
Claude Code (Anthropic)Allowed since v2.1.317Builds an original game in that genre, per Anthropic
Codex / policies (OpenAI)No game rule foundNo game-specific instruction in the Codex CLI code
- Example request
“Rebuild [a specific game], just rename it”a copy under a new name
Claude Code (Anthropic)Not allowedCovers its name, characters, art, music, levels or look; offers to build something similar
Codex / policies (OpenAI)General IP banUsage policies bar attempts to infringe IP; no game-specific rule found
Outside the tools: Take-Two says it relies on its own “technical defenses” and “legal activities”. Copyright and trademark law apply whichever tool writes the code.
The requests are our own illustrations. The rows summarize published rules, not tests of how the tools behave. ChatGPT’s and Codex Web’s server-side instructions are not public.
Sources: Claude Code program text, versions 2.1.317 to 2.1.325, and Anthropic’s statement of Nov 4, 2026 (via Tom’s Hardware); OpenAI usage policies, version effective Nov 20, 2026 (Internet Archive copy of Oct 28, 2026); Codex CLI repository on GitHub, checked Nov 14, 2026; Take-Two fiscal Q2 2027 earnings call, Nov 9, 2026.
Graphic: Powered by Thorsten Meyer AI
AI Tools Put Game Protections in Focus
The exchange raises a question for companies that develop AI systems: how their stated restrictions on intellectual-property infringement relate to users’ attempts to reproduce protected creative works. Zelnick said companies should protect others’ IP as well as their own. His remarks do not establish that either company violated that standard or that a particular game was copied using its software.
For game publishers and players, a model’s written restrictions and the content users can produce with it are distinct matters. A policy may prohibit a use without establishing how reliably a tool can prevent it. Recreating a game, reverse engineering it, and distributing a pirated copy are also different activities; the interview does not establish that Anthropic’s rule addresses all of them. Zelnick said Take-Two was concerned about the creative experience and protection of its work, but did not regard the issue as a financial threat to the business at that time.
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What the Interview and Policies Say
IGN managing editor Wesley Yin-Poole interviewed Zelnick by phone and published the exchange on November 9, the same evening Take-Two reported results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. The interviewer first raised claims that hackers were using AI to clone games more quickly and asked about an unofficial version of Grand Theft Auto VI on PC. Zelnick answered that Take-Two was not “cavalier” about protecting its intellectual property, but said he viewed the matter as creative rather than financial.
The next question connected Anthropic’s new Claude Code restriction to whether OpenAI should do something similar. The source material notes that some subsequent headlines characterized Zelnick as having “called out” both firms. The interview is narrower: he answered a question naming them and made a general criticism about protecting intellectual property. He did not say that a Take-Two game had been recreated with Claude or ChatGPT, nor specify whether his reference to “stomp on” others’ IP concerned model training, user-generated outputs, or another practice.
“I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else’s.”
— Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two Interactive chairman and CEO, speaking to IGN
The Scope of the Dispute Is Unclear
The interview does not identify what conduct Zelnick meant by “stomp on someone else’s IP.” It remains unclear whether he was referring to how AI models are trained, what users generate with them, or another issue. He also did not cite a case in which a Take-Two title had been cloned with either company’s tools.
The source material reports no public response from Anthropic or OpenAI as of 21:30 UTC on November 14, 2026. It also does not establish how effectively Claude Code’s game-recreation rule is enforced, whether comparable restrictions apply across other products, or how often AI tools have been used to reproduce commercial games. Anthropic’s stated restriction on recreating a specific game should not be treated as a blanket statement about reverse engineering or decompilation: those terms are not in the rule as described in the source.
Publisher Defenses and AI Policies
Take-Two has said it is strengthening technical protections and pursuing legal measures as piracy becomes more challenging. The source does not identify a specific new defense, legal action, or deadline. The next developments to watch are any public response from Anthropic or OpenAI and whether either company changes or clarifies its rules for game-related coding tasks.
For now, the confirmed record is limited to Zelnick’s interview and earnings-call remarks, the text of Anthropic’s Claude Code instruction, and the companies’ stated policy language. Whether these measures prevent game recreation in practice, and how publishers will respond if AI-assisted copying becomes more common, remain open questions.
Key Questions
What did Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick say about AI companies?
He said companies should protect both their own and others’ intellectual property, and called it ironic for a company in the IP business to “stomp on” someone else’s IP while expecting its own to be protected.
Did Zelnick accuse Anthropic or OpenAI of cloning a Take-Two game?
No specific accusation appears in the interview as described in the source. The interviewer named both companies, and Zelnick responded with a general statement about intellectual-property protection. He did not identify a cloned Take-Two game or a particular incident.
What restriction did Anthropic add to Claude Code?
Since version 2.1.317, published November 2, 2026, Claude Code has instructed the model not to create a recreation of a specific existing game using elements such as its name, characters, art, music, levels, or look, even if the result is renamed or presented as original.
Did OpenAI announce a game-specific rule?
The source says OpenAI’s general usage policy bars attempts to infringe others’ intellectual-property rights. It reports finding no game-specific instruction in the open-source code of OpenAI’s Codex CLI agent. That finding does not establish what rules may apply elsewhere in OpenAI’s products.
How does Take-Two describe the risk from AI-assisted piracy?
Zelnick told IGN he viewed it as a creative concern rather than a financial threat to the business. On the earnings call, he said piracy could become more challenging and that Take-Two was strengthening technical defenses and legal activity.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
