Claude: Stop Using Me to Recreate Games - PCMag Australia

(Credit: Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Over the past year, frontier AI models have radically changed the playing field for the game modding community, allowing users to recreate game code from scratch much faster than ever before. This has enabled creative new versions of well-known titles, such as putting Mario in Elden Ring or combining Skate 3 and World of Warcraft, and unlikely platform-to-platform ports. But it’s also led to plenty of copyright claims and takedown requests from publishers and developers. Now, it seems Anthropic is putting its foot down. Anthropic’s Claude Code and Opus 5.5 model are reportedly blocking attempts at reverse-engineering, including via the popular open-source Reverse Engineer Anything (REA) tool, according to Tom’s Hardware , which cited numerous reports from users on GitHub. Tom’s Hardware suggested that the issue may be linked to a newly introduced text rule , which reportedly instructs the model to avoid “[recreating] a specific existing game.” Anthropic has yet to officially comment on the reports. The outlet posits that the move could be a way for Anthropic to preemptively protect itself from potential lawsuits from game studios and other software firms. Recommended by Our Editors Spotify Wants to Let Subscribers Remix Songs With AI, for a Price Facial Recognition Could Be Coming to a Starbucks Near You Sam Altman Suggests Running AI Locally Is a Waste of Memory AI-generated copies of software have proved to be a serious emerging issue outside of the video game world. In the past few months, we’ve seen AI recreations of popular enterprise software from Microsoft and Adobe appear online. The tide of AI clones has also caused serious issues on platforms like Valve’s Steam, with developers complaining of a deluge of low-quality, AI-generated games hitting the platform, or alleging that they had been hit with extortion attempts from bad actors claiming they would copy their games with AI before they officially release. But it may be tough for one AI firm to fully stamp out the issue. As Tom’s Hardware notes, users have already suggested that would-be game cloners could simply pivot to Chinese, open-weight or local LLMs if companies like Anthropic block their recreation plans.