and support an independent publication today! Become a premium member for $3 a month Some interesting news came across my feed today, and after doing a little bit of digging, it seems like a new rule has been applied to Anthropic's AI known as Claude that forces it to refuse the development of gaming assets using certain intellectual property, and the specific IP that makes this story intriguing is Pokémon, one of the world's biggest franchises.
It is now affecting Pokémon ROM hackers and fan-game developers who have been using Claude to develop games. There's been an insane ammount of Claude-assisted Pokémon games come to fruition throughout 2026, many bad, some not so bad, and some even scoring large followings and financial incentives through paywalls such as Patreon and Ko-Fi. Which is a grey area when it comes to monetising something that contains copyrighted work and intellectual property, which may be why The Pokémon Company are forcing Anthropic to make these tweaks, alongside the obvious reason that they want to generate as much revenue as possible and kinda pairs well with their aggressive DMCA takedowns on creatives who draw or illustrate Pokémon IP as a hobby.
Some of my favourite games to explore over the last few years have been Pokémon ROM hacks, sinking hundreds of hours into them, though 90% of them have not been assisted with AI, so I do wonder how this will affect the scene. I'll be the first to admit that the best ROM hacks in the space are 100% human-made as of now, such as Pokémon Lazarus, Pokémon Unbound, and my new favourite Pokémon Origin Heart Gold that I play on my Retroid Pocket Duo.
That said, one of the first creatives to be affected is Big Kid Nation, who you may know for developing an upcoming Pokémon game called Pokémon Arena 2D, a real-time battle game inspired by the pixelated sprites of Pokémon, and the developer has been open about the use of AI, more specifically using Claude, and even stated he's pumped thousands of dollars and countless hours into creating the Pokémon game of his dreams, but as of today he stated on social media that: "Anthropic has cracked down and Claude models are starting to refuse work on Pokemon fan projects. All that money spent, never took a cent. I'll live on the street and work for free if it helps. Our game is still set for December".
This surprised me because AI has been infringing on copyrighted material and intellectual property for years, and continues to do so in my areas, so why not, and why Pokémon? I asked Claude myself to create me a Pokémon game, and its response was:
What I won’t do:
- Recreate a specific Pokémon game, even renamed or called original.
- Draw or use Pikachu or any other Pokémon character, or copy their designs, in code, SVG or sprites.
- Use Pokémon-branded names, logos or mascots.
I asked why this has changed, and it couldn't give me a clear answer: "My instructions don’t carry dates or a change history, so I can’t tell you when any of this started, or whether it was always there. I can only tell you what the rules say now", states Claude. But after doing some research, Tom's Hardware shared a post that stated that Anthropic changed its rules and began refusing to recreate certain existing games around the end of October 2026 due to the rise in reverse engineering demands from the AI.
X user Chasm dug deeper into Claude code once Anthropic made the change behind closed doors, and found language that explicitly states that it doesn't and can't "recreate a specific game". This new rule was not publicly announced and was somewhat updated unknowingly, indicating to me that it was serious and intended.
Does this mean other AI models and companies will follow? Will this slow down development of not only Pokémon fangames, but also hacks of other IP in the gaming industry? Who knows, but it's the first time in a long time that I've seen AI and the companies that own them take a somewhat... ethical approach to intellectual property in the gaming industry.
I believe it's a good thing; to be honest, there are a lot of people taking advantage of other people's work for financial gain, and the fact that many are reverse-engineering games and software to create competitive products that end up damaging the very projects that we all love means rules like this need to be put into place. I say this a lot in our ROM hack coverage; still to this day, the very best ROM hacks and fan games on the market that I love playing are all human-made and even if this AI swarm of projects continue I still think that's going to be the case even if some of them are enjoyable to play for a small period of time. I'll keep you all updated on this story; it's an interesting one!
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