Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick Sees an IP Double Standard in AI Game Cloning
He said AI cloning poses a creative, not financial, concern and argued that Anthropic and OpenAI should protect game makers' intellectual property.
AI attempts to reverse-engineer games are not a financial threat to Take-Two, but CEO Strauss Zelnick sees a creative concern: developers and players should receive the experience Rockstar intends.
In an IGN interview, Zelnick discussed AI reverse-engineering and unofficial native PC ports. “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. It’s important to everyone, our developers and our consumers alike, to deliver the experience Rockstar envisions,” he said. He added that Take-Two is focused on the issue and is not dismissing it as technology advances quickly.
Zelnick also argued that AI companies should protect other creators’ intellectual property, not only their own. Asked whether companies should restrict users from reverse-engineering games, he said, “I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else’s.” He called it ironic for businesses such as Anthropic and OpenAI, which have intellectual property of their own, to use someone else’s while expecting their work to stay protected.
Anthropic had recently added a Claude policy against recreating another person’s specific game. The policy still allows original games, genre-based projects, and games built from a user’s own designs and assets. OpenAI, by contrast, had no comparable restriction in place at the time.
Some developers have canceled demos or playtests because they feared their games could be copied and sold before their official launches. The boundary between making a game in an established genre and reproducing a particular title has practical consequences for creators deciding how much of an unfinished game to show.
In February, Zelnick said generative AI had no role in GTA 6 and described Rockstar’s worlds as handcrafted, in his comments on GTA 6’s development.
Where should AI companies draw the line between genre-inspired games and recreating a specific title? Follow the continuing debate over game IP and AI rules on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.
