Dumping “up to $2,000” a month into Pokemon fan game, vibe coder says Claude is “starting to refuse”

Anthropic has tightened Claude’s rules to prevent assistance with projects that infringe intellectual property, and the developer of Pokémon Arena 2D says the models are beginning to refuse work on the fan game. The developer says they will continue despite the change, leaving uncertainty over how much the project can progress with reduced AI support.

The developer says the project has cost up to $2,000 a month and involved 10 to 14-hour working days for much of the year, while earning no money from it. Pokémon Arena 2D is a real-time arena battler using community-made Pokémon sprites, rather than a recreation of a specific existing game; a human team is also growing. The developer says it remains scheduled for December.