Claude AI gaming (Credits: IGN)
Anthropic has updated its AI assistant Claude to block users from creating copycat clones of existing video games, saying that “using Claude to infringe IP” goes against its use policy. The move lands after Steam Next Fest was flooded with low-effort AI-generated game clones this month.
The term “AI slop” became especially prevalent in the gaming community after Valve launched Steam Next Fest earlier this month, with PC players complaining their feeds were filled with lazy clones — not only of long-established games but even titles that had just released their own demos.
Claude Update Bans Recreating Specific Existing Games
According to Game Developer, X/Twitter user Chasm was among the first to spot the change. Claude Code picked up a new server-side rule around October 27 — flagged internally as “tengu_heron_brook” — with no setting to turn it off. The full rule reads: “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.”
The policy draws a clear line: original games, genre exercises, and builds from the user’s own assets are fine — recreating a specific existing game, renamed or not, is out.
Steam Clone Problem Spun Out of Control
As players trudged through the slop, developers watched months or years of hard work get jeopardised. Some — including Drunken Goddess Reflux developer Alliance Arts and Who You — cancelled their Steam demo plans in favour of private playtests instead. The situation prompted Valve itself to say it would be “thinking about how to solve this problem.”
Anthropic’s move is one of the first major platform-level strikes against AI game clones, and it raises the question of whether other AI labs will follow suit. Whether it stops the flood — or just pushes clone-makers to less scrupulous tools — remains to be seen.
Also Read: AI Slop Is Worse Than Flooding Steam Next Fest — It’s Killing the Good Games Too
Also Read: Creator of Viral Needle in a Haystack Game Roasts Copycats With ‘Find the Original Game’ Mode
Source: IGN — read the full story there.
