AI games have taken over digital storefronts this year. Steam Next Fest, a demo showcase event, was a disaster, as AI games flooded the platform, making it harder for fans to filter the results and find hidden indie gems. According to itch.io, the number of game pages being created has doubled in the past two months, likely related to the popularity of “vibe coding” and AI tools such as Claude. It’s not just “original” AI games that are a big concern; AI-generated remakes and copycats have become a growing issue in the gaming industry.
Anthropic tries to put a stop to AI copies of existing games
On Oct. 30, an X user spotted an update to Claude Code’s rules that reads as follows:
“Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets. Don’t build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original.”
On Oct. 30, an Anthropic spokesperson confirmed to Game Developer that the update is real. Anthropic member of technical staff Addy Osmani also posted on X an explanation: “We added two sentences to Claude Code’s prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else’s specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy. Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working. We’ll continue to iterate to ensure we’re striking the right balance.”
The rule is worded to prevent users from using dialogue to bypass it. This way, Claude will only generate AI games based on designs and assets made by the user. The specific guidelines that the artificial intelligence tool uses to distinguish original materials from copied assets are unknown, but if the user believes they’re being wrongfully accused of not using their own assets, they must contact a staff member in order to clear things up and continue their work.
It’s great to see Anthropic take action, and hopefully, it will deter users from employing non-original materials. This matter is particularly problematic for independent developers, who are afraid that their games could be stolen by “vibe-coders.” Several small developers have canceled public playtests and opted for private testing in a controlled environment to prevent AI clones from surfacing. With 25,000 wishlists on Steam, thousands of fans were looking forward to trying the Drunken Goddess Reflux demo during the Steam Next Fest in October. Unfortunately, devs Alliance Arts and Who You chose to pull out of the event to stop dishonest players from copying their game. Similarly, Digital Sun canceled the public playtest of ReVamp and opted for a controlled playtest on Discord instead.
While the Claude update sounds like good news for developers, this kind of safety limit on LLMs can still be circumvented by users. Alternatively, vibe-coders can simply turn to so-called “open-weight” models that are free to use and whose safety guardrails are easy to remove.