My Game Was Cloned With AI: What Do I Do?

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
The developers started building the clone eleven days ago, and Brown reports that Claude moved from a complete spec to a playable core in twelve minutes, against the seven months he spent on Word Play.See it on page 1
02
Brown states that Word Play made about $44,000 so far in 2026, which he describes as roughly $400 a month of passive income.See it on page 1
03
The developers say the clone's core, making words from a tile grid with score targets and modifiers, follows Word Play very closely, with added perks, special tiles, meta progression, and multiplayer.See it on page 1
04
Brown says the clone includes modes and features Word Play lacks, such as a fast-paced timer mode, a daily challenge, multiplayer modes, and a meta progression layer.See it on page 1
05
Brown reports that Anthropic said it added two sentences to Claude Code's prompt to steer it away from recreating someone else's specific game, because using Claude to infringe IP is against its usage policy.See it on page 1
06
Brown has asked the developers to hold off from releasing the game in any form until he had a chance to think about it and make the video, and will try to do a poll for viewers.See it on page 1

Summary

Game Maker's Toolkit creator Mark Brown writes a video transcript, published November 5, 2026 on his Substack, about an email he received from two hobby developers who built a word game with Claude Code that closely follows his game Word Play, adding perks, special tiles, meta progression, multiplayer races and duels, and a Hungarian mode. The developers started building the game eleven days ago with Claude Code; it is online behind an access code shared with a few friends and family, and they asked Brown how he felt and what he wanted them to do. Brown describes Word Play as having made about $44,000 in 2026 so far, roughly $400 a month, and says the clone's chat logs show Claude moving from a complete spec to a playable core in twelve minutes, compared with the seven months it took him. He says the clone has modes and features his game lacks, while also finding some of its added complexity unwelcome. He reports that Anthropic has added instructions to steer Claude Code away from recreating someone else's specific game. Brown has asked the developers to hold off from releasing the game in any form until he had a chance to think about it and make the video, and says he will try to do a poll.