Take-Two’s Boss Calls Out OpenAI and Anthropic Over AI Game Clones as GTA 6 Piracy Fears Grow

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has had a crack at OpenAI and Anthropic over AI tools being used to clone and reverse-engineer games. Speaking to IGN, he said it seems “ironic” for companies in the IP business “to stomp on someone else’s IP and hope that yours is protected”.

The interview followed Take-Two’s latest earnings, and the comments have been doing the rounds again this weekend as GTA 6’s launch closes in. Rockstar’s game unlocks at midnight NZDT on Thursday 19 November.

What Zelnick said

• On AI clones: “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.”
• On Rockstar: he reckons “pretty much everyone wants the Rockstar experience as Rockstar intended”.
• On AI companies: “I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else’s.”
• On the irony: “If you’re in the intellectual property business, which Anthropic is and OpenAI is, then it seems ironic on the one hand to stomp on someone else’s IP and hope that yours is protected.”
• On piracy: on the earnings call he said Take-Two is “utterly focused on enhancing our technical defenses and enhancing our legal activities appropriately”, according to IGN.

Why Take-Two is twitchy

AI-assisted decompiling has exploded this year. IGN points to Minecraft running inside X and GTA 5 briefly being made playable in a browser before it was pulled, plus fears that an unofficial PC version of GTA 6 could turn up soon after launch.

The weak spot is the PS5. IGN reports Sony is playing whack-a-mole with jailbreakers, and if one lands for the firmware GTA 6 needs, the game could be pirated on PS5 and potentially ported to PC.

What Anthropic and OpenAI have done

• Anthropic: it added two sentences to Claude Code’s prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else’s specific game, staffer Addy Osmani confirmed on X on 30 October, per Tom’s Hardware and The Verge.
• Still allowed: “Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working,” Osmani said.
• The pushback: Tom’s Hardware says the change copped heavy criticism from developers, with users reporting Opus 5.5 also blocking reverse-engineering tasks.
• OpenAI: ChatGPT’s owner seemingly has no equivalent restriction for now, according to GamesRadar+.

Our take

Zelnick’s got a point. It’s a bit rich for AI companies that guard their own models like Fort Knox to shrug when their tools spit out somebody else’s game, and at least Anthropic actually did something about it.

But let’s not pretend Take-Two is a starving artist here. This is the company about to make an absolute bucketload off GTA 6, and we’d bet “enhancing our legal activities” means a fresh truckload of cease-and-desist letters for modders and fan projects too.

Catch up on our GTA 6 page, including Take-Two dodging pre-order numbers and Tim Sweeney’s latest AI rant. Whose side are you on? Have it out in the GetRekt Discord.

Sources

• IGN: Take-Two ‘enhancing’ technical defences and legal activities to combat GTA 6 AI reverse-engineering threat
• GamesRadar+: Take-Two CEO calls out Anthropic and OpenAI over AI game clones
• Insider Gaming: GTA 6 AI cloning is not a financial threat, says Take-Two CEO
• This Week in Videogames: AI-generated GTA VI clones not a threat to our business, says Take-Two CEO
• The Verge: Anthropic clamps down on Claude’s AI video game clones
• Tom’s Hardware: Anthropic confirms new Claude Code limits to prevent game cloning
• Rockstar Games (YouTube): Grand Theft Auto VI Launch Trailer