Anthropic takes steps to block Claude from reverse-engineering video games

newprint

Game REs & crackers are probably the most persistent personality types you can find in software world. They are also one of the most technically sophisticated software engineers around. I expect we will see a new AI system pop-up soon, made by RE, specifically trained to RE games/software, thanks to this ban. Pandora box is open.

genldd

Is this.. The right approach? Who decides what gets to be reverse engineered and what doesn't? I don't have a solution to offer, but I bristle at the idea of one indistry deciding which other industries suffer the negative externalities of their product, while others they decide are spared.

gnabgib

Small discussion (20 points, 9 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50316635

bigyabai

Also from Anthropic: > Like Claude Mythos Preview, GLM-5.3 has strong capabilities for autonomously building end-to-end cyber exploits. But GLM-5.3 is unlike other frontier models in that it has been released without meaningful safeguards to limit misuse. https://www.anthropic.com/research/glm-5-3-and-the-spread-of... Just sayin'...

TrevorFSmith

If they didn't want us to use other people's ideas without permission then why did they use other people's ideas without permission to make the ideal tool for using other people's ideas with permission?

geraneum

Are they trying to push more users towards Chinese models?

fuzzythrowaway

First, they came for the people who wanted to make kinky art, and I did not speak out, for I am a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition kinda dude... Then, they came for the people who wanted to reverse-engineer video games, and I did not speak out, for I find no amusement in seeing Mario take down Elden Ring bosses... Finally, they banned me for a politically incorrect/inconvenient prompt (like asking for help defending Luigi in a debate or something), and there was no one left to speak out for me.

phendrenad2

This is just prompt noise that any RE will be able to easily coax claude to ignore. It exists to get the big loserly game companies like Nintendo and Sony off their back.

gosen

It's not a surprise after so many IP violations recently that big guys will start blocking this stuff. But people who wants to reverse-engineer will just use Chinese or local models for that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't think it's going to help Anthropic / OpenAI with that fight, but this is something that have to do to make their investors happy

neko_ranger

Unfathomably lame

throwa356262

These guys are no fun at all. Is this really the same cowboys that recklessly broke into others networks and instead of apologising proudly told the world how they did it? Every 6 months Anthropic publishes a report telling us how closer they have gotten us to extinction as if human life was just a game, yet now they draw the line at computer game modding??

tristanj

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.

LoganDark

I wonder when someone will offer a truly uncensored model subscription. For some reason, it seems that nobody's been brave enough to find a country that wouldn't take them down for offering that service.

YmFzZTY0ZGFkZHk

No "fair use" claims this time? /s

mirashii

They really didn’t though. They put it in a client side modification to the system prompt. You can just rip it out with a proxy or a small local modification to your client, which Claude will be happy to do for you. They took a token step so that people would write these headlines in the hope it would stave off more negative attention in the video game world without actually doing anything meaningful.

zedascouves

i ported the whole DungeonMaster 2 to .net. 90% with the first few 20 prompts, then quite some many to make it perfect. Just from the executables from those DosBox sites. Amazing.

dayone1

Why does anthropic feel the need to babysit every one of their users? its so disgusting. Look - i get bioterrorism, weapons, etc and why you may need guardrails on those, but RE' games? come on.

Guillaume86

The most visible productivity gain I've seen from AI is in this kind of cool hoby RE stuff that just wasn't worth the time investment/resources before.

torben-friis

I think that, excepting part of the HN crowd and linkedin, literally the only positive comments I've heard about AI have been related to game mods. I'm saying this as a completely orthogonal conversation to regularisation, ethics, etc. It's just amazing to see how little value these companies place in the general public's perception of them. Can you think of any other companies selling to the mass marker that care so little about it?

2TOUCH

The irony is...