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tristanj • yesterday at 9:47 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

A very rational choice by Anthropic.

The cost of blocking videogame reverse engineering is trivial. They added three lines to the system prompt to exclude it and probably made a small update to their backend training classifiers. They give up the videogame reverse engineering market, which is a tiny future revenue stream and not worth much financially. In exchange they avoid hundreds of millions, maybe billions, in future copyright lawsuits.

Providing this service has negative expected value. It's better to cede the market to someone else.


Replies

password54321 • yesterday at 9:56 PM

>copyright lawsuits

Absolutely the thing they care about. https://stanforddaily.com/2026/10/27/professors-books-pirate...

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testing22321 • yesterday at 9:54 PM

> In exchange they avoid hundreds of millions, maybe billions, in future copyright lawsuits.

Will the lawsuits not come from adobe? From big SaaS companies? From every other major piece of software any Joe will be able to duplicate with a single prompt in a few hours?

This admission is showing that Anthropic believes they might get in hot water for reverse engineering video games. Surely it applies to everything else.

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avaer • yesterday at 9:52 PM

> They give up the videogame reverse engineering market, which is a tiny future revenue stream and not worth much financially

Btw video games are by far the biggest entertainment industry in history.

If the way video games of the future are made is with AI, the logic might be reversed; giving up some lawsuits now, while missing out on large entertainment revenue in the long term.

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