Nowadays, using generative AI for "casual coding" to create shoddy game content has become a chaotic trend, covering both imitations and decompiled versions of existing games. Not all publishers are turning a blind eye to this. Recently, Activision and Bethesda, both under Microsoft, took action against two different projects.
The first project is called Fallout: New York. Clips shared by user ChrisFirst on X show an attempt to recreate this open-world shooter in a browser, setting the stage in New York. The project was coded by Claude Opus 5.5 and, at first glance, looks exactly like Fallout.
"There are quests, dialogue trees, the V.A.T.S. system, and a fully functional Pip-Boy. There are no texture files or sound files," ChrisFirst wrote. "All buildings, weapons, character faces, and sounds are generated by code."
However, the project didn't last long. The first post, published on September 28, garnered over 3.5 million views, but just a few days later, on October 1, ChrisFirst confirmed that he had abandoned the project after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Bethesda alleging intellectual property infringement. Accompanying a screenshot of the legal warning, he wrote, "Hey Bethesda Studios, how about you make a Fallout game yourselves? Save me the trouble." "Sorry to everyone who enjoyed this game! Management stepped in, and the fun ends here."
This week, another AI-generated "casual coding" Call of Duty project also caught the attention of game company legal teams. On September 30, Maurice Heijmans shared on X that he was using generative AI to decompile the source code of the original PC version of Modern Warfare 2. "Currently, 17 intelligent agents are working in parallel, and the progress is astonishingly fast," he wrote. "The game is now fully playable, with almost all obvious bugs fixed, leaving only a few scattered ones. I even managed to launch the first nuclear bomb."
Activision's response was to directly "nuke" the gameplay clips shared in his post. The video, originally showcasing killstreak rewards, was replaced with a warning: "This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner." The link to the website hosting the code is also reportedly inaccessible. Maurice Heijmans' other recent tweets complained that his AI agents had deleted all his content. "These guys did it again," he posted over the weekend.
AI "casual coding" projects suspected of infringing on well-known game IPs go viral every now and then, and no one knows how long this "whack-a-M.O.L.E" crackdown can continue. Major game publishers have not yet filed lawsuits against AI companies, unlike some Hollywood studios. Commenting on this takedown, one netizen said: "Instead of addressing the technological root cause, they're just targeting small developers. This is basically version 2.0 of the music industry's Napster incident. We've seen the ending before; in the end, we win, and they lose."