Could AI Game Clones Cross The Line On Intellectual Property?

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Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said AI companies should protect other people’s intellectual property as well as their own, responding to a question about Anthropic’s new restriction on recreating existing games with its coding agent. In an IGN interview published November 9, he called the situation “ironic,” but did not cite a specific game clone or say that Anthropic or OpenAI had infringed Take-Two’s rights.

The exchange came as Zelnick discussed AI-assisted game copying and piracy with IGN managing editor Wesley Yin-Poole. Asked whether other companies, including OpenAI, should follow Anthropic’s move, Zelnick said: “I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else’s.” 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 interview did not establish what specific conduct he meant by that phrase.

Anthropic’s Claude Code instructions prohibit the model from building “a recreation of a specific existing game”, including one using its name, characters, art, music, levels or look, even if the result is renamed or described as original. The source material says the instruction appeared in version 2.1.317, published November 2, and is grounded in Anthropic’s policy against infringing third-party IP. OpenAI’s usage policies also bar attempts to infringe others’ intellectual-property rights, but the source reports finding no comparable game-specific instruction in the open-source code for its Codex CLI agent.

Zelnick separately told IGN that he did not view AI-enabled piracy as a financial threat to Take-Two, but did see it as a creative concern. On the company’s earnings call that day, he said piracy could become “more of a challenge” and said Take-Two was improving its technical defenses and legal activity. Those remarks describe the publisher’s stated response, not evidence that a particular Take-Two game has been copied using an AI tool.

Game Cloning and IP Safeguards

The debate concerns how AI companies set limits on what their coding tools can produce, how those limits are enforced, and whether broad rules against infringement address requests to reproduce a recognizable game. For game publishers, unauthorized copies could affect creative control and the intended player experience. Zelnick said he did not view AI-enabled piracy as a financial threat to Take-Two, but described it as a creative concern.

That assessment reflects the company executive’s view and is not independent evidence about the potential commercial effects of AI-assisted copying. The publicly stated policies indicate that tool providers may restrict assistance with direct recreations, while questions remain about borderline requests and how decisions are made.

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What the Policies Actually Say

The immediate prompt for the interview exchange was Anthropic’s addition of a game-specific instruction to Claude Code. Its wording focuses on recreating a specific existing game and names recognizable elements such as characters, art, music and levels. It does not, in the material provided, explicitly describe the restriction as a ban on reverse engineering or decompilation. Those activities appeared in the questions around the issue, but should not be treated as identical to the rule’s stated scope.

OpenAI’s stated usage policy bars attempts to infringe intellectual-property rights, while the source found no game-specific instruction in Codex CLI’s open-source code. That difference in publicly available wording does not by itself show how either company handles every request in practice. The interview was published on the evening Take-Two reported results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, and came ten days before the scheduled release of Grand Theft Auto VI, according to the source material.

“I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else’s.”

— Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two Interactive CEO, in an IGN interview published November 9, 2026

The Conduct Behind the Criticism

Zelnick did not define “stomp on someone else’s IP.” The interview does not clarify whether he meant outputs generated by AI tools, the data or methods used to build AI models, or another practice. Nor does the source identify a Take-Two title that has been cloned using Claude or ChatGPT, or establish that either company violated intellectual-property law.

The practical reach of the companies’ policies is also uncertain from the information available. A written rule does not answer how requests are reviewed, what counts as a sufficiently close recreation, or how consistently restrictions operate across tools and versions. As of 21:30 UTC on November 14, the source reported no public response from Anthropic or OpenAI to Zelnick’s comments. No legal finding or specific dispute involving the named companies is established here.

Policy Enforcement and Publisher Defenses

The next developments to watch are whether Anthropic or OpenAI publicly address Zelnick’s criticism, and whether either company publishes further detail about how its safeguards apply to game-related requests. Any assessment of their effectiveness would require evidence about how the rules work in practice, not just their written wording.

Take-Two, meanwhile, has said it is strengthening technical defenses and legal activity as it anticipates greater piracy challenges. The source does not give a timetable, describe specific measures, or identify a coming enforcement action. Further claims about game cloning should be checked against evidence of the particular output, the rights involved and the conduct at issue.

Key Questions

What did Strauss Zelnick say about AI companies and game intellectual property?

He said companies should protect their own intellectual property and everyone else’s. He described it as ironic for AI companies to violate other people’s IP while expecting their own rights to be protected, but did not identify a specific violation.

What restriction did Anthropic add to Claude Code?

The instruction says Claude Code should not build a recreation of a specific existing game, including one using its name, characters, art, music, levels or look, even if renamed or presented as original.

Did Zelnick accuse Anthropic or OpenAI of cloning a Take-Two game?

No specific accusation of that kind appears in the reported interview. Zelnick answered a question naming the companies and made a general criticism; the source does not identify a cloned Take-Two title.

Does OpenAI have a game-specific rule like Anthropic’s?

OpenAI’s usage policies prohibit attempts to infringe others’ intellectual-property rights. The source says it found no game-specific instruction in the open-source code of OpenAI’s Codex CLI, which does not establish how every OpenAI product handles such requests.

What remains unresolved?

Zelnick did not specify what conduct he meant by “stomp on someone else’s IP.” The source also leaves open how the companies enforce their policies and reports no public response from Anthropic or OpenAI as of November 14, 2026.

Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com