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TL;DR
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said AI companies should protect both their own intellectual property and that of others, responding to a question about Anthropic and OpenAI. He described AI-assisted game cloning as a creative concern, while saying piracy could become more challenging. The interview did not identify a specific cloned game or accuse either company of a particular infringement.
Take-Two Interactive CEO 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 AI tools and game cloning. He described the issue as a creative concern rather than a financial threat to Take-Two, and did not identify a specific game clone or accuse Anthropic or OpenAI of a particular infringement.
Zelnick was responding to a question about Anthropic’s new restriction for 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 told IGN. 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 interviewer, rather than Zelnick, introduced the names Anthropic and OpenAI.
Asked whether AI-assisted cloning threatened Take-Two financially, Zelnick said, “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 the company wants developers’ intended experience to reach consumers and is vigilant about protecting its intellectual property. On Take-Two’s earnings call that 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 instructions, in a version published November 2, tell the model not to create “a recreation of a specific existing game,” including one that copies its name, characters, art, music, levels or look, even if renamed or described as original. The source report says this restriction is grounded in Anthropic’s policy against infringing third-party intellectual property. OpenAI’s usage policies also prohibit attempts to infringe others’ intellectual-property rights, but the report found no comparable game-specific instruction in the open-source code for its 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
How Game Cloning Tests IP Rules
The exchange puts a practical question for game makers and AI developers into public view: when does a tool-assisted imitation cross from inspiration into infringement? Zelnick’s comments express Take-Two’s position on protecting creative work, but they do not resolve that boundary or establish that any AI company or user has violated the law.
The distinction matters because the published AI rules operate at different levels of specificity. Anthropic’s cited coding instruction names elements of a specific game that should not be recreated, while OpenAI’s stated policy is framed more generally around intellectual-property rights. A written restriction is not, by itself, evidence of how often a model will refuse a request, how a policy is enforced, or whether a particular output is unlawful. Those questions depend on the tools, the material produced and the facts of an individual dispute.
For players and studios, Zelnick also separated the issue of creative control from lost sales. He said he did not see cloning as a financial threat to Take-Two at that point, while warning on the earnings call that piracy could become harder to manage. His remarks describe the company’s assessment; they do not quantify piracy or establish the scale of any current game-cloning activity.
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The Interview and Anthropic Rule
IGN managing editor Wesley Yin-Poole interviewed Zelnick by phone. The interview was published November 9, 2026, the same evening Take-Two reported results for the fiscal quarter ended September 30. The interviewer first asked about reports of hackers using AI to clone games and potentially bypass console protections, then asked about Anthropic’s restriction and whether OpenAI should do the same.
The source account distinguishes the interviewer’s framing from the policy’s wording. IGN’s question referred to blocking Claude from “reverse engineering video games”; the quoted Claude Code instruction instead concerns recreating a specific existing game and its identifiable elements. It does not, in the wording provided, refer to reverse engineering or decompiling. On the earnings call, Zelnick said game piracy had historically faced obstacles such as file sizes, complexity and server connections, but could become more challenging.
Headlines described Zelnick as calling out the AI companies. The interview supports a narrower account: he answered a question that named them, offered a general principle and called the situation ironic. He did not specify what conduct he meant by “stomp on someone else’s IP,” and the source does not report that he said a Take-Two title had been cloned using Claude or ChatGPT.
“I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else’s.”
— Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two Interactive chairman and CEO, in an interview with IGN
The Limits of the Public Record
The interview does not say whether Zelnick’s reference to “stomp on someone else’s IP” concerned AI training, material users generate, or another practice. It also names no specific clone, user, product or legal case. The comments should not be read as proof that Anthropic or OpenAI infringed Take-Two’s rights.
The available material does not establish how frequently Claude Code or OpenAI tools block game-recreation requests, how either company applies its policy in practice, or whether the policies cover every scenario involving imitation. The source report found no public response from Anthropic or OpenAI to Zelnick’s remarks as of 21:30 UTC on November 14. The scale and commercial effects of AI-assisted game cloning also remain unquantified in the material provided.
Monitoring Tools and Piracy
Take-Two’s stated next steps are to strengthen its technical defenses and legal activity in response to piracy concerns. Zelnick did not give a timeline, identify particular measures or describe a specific enforcement action. The company’s comments therefore indicate an ongoing response, not a newly announced lawsuit or a confirmed case of an AI-made clone.
Further clarity may come from updates to AI companies’ published policies, explanations of how their coding agents handle requests to recreate existing games, or specific disputes involving game developers. Until then, the central question remains fact-specific: what was copied, how it was produced and whether the use infringes protected rights. No public reply from either AI company was reported by the source’s stated cutoff.
Key Questions
What did Strauss Zelnick say about AI game cloning?
He said AI companies should protect their own and others’ intellectual property. He characterized game cloning as a creative concern, not a financial threat to Take-Two at that time.
Did Zelnick accuse Anthropic or OpenAI of copying a Take-Two game?
No specific accusation appears in the reported interview. He answered a question that named the companies, but did not identify a cloned Take-Two game or a particular act of infringement.
What restriction did Anthropic add to Claude Code?
The cited instruction tells Claude Code not to recreate a specific existing game’s name, characters, art, music, levels or look, even if the request presents the recreation as renamed or original.
Does OpenAI have the same game-specific rule?
The source report found that OpenAI’s usage policies prohibit attempts to infringe others’ intellectual-property rights, but found no game-specific instruction in the open-source Codex CLI code it reviewed.
Does copying a game’s style automatically infringe copyright?
The material does not answer that legal question. It reports company policies and Zelnick’s comments, not a legal ruling. Whether a particular output infringes rights depends on the details of the work and its use.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
