Claude Code now refuses to clone video games, even with a new name

Around 27 October, two sentences slipped into the instructions Anthropic feeds to Claude Code. They were spotted by Chasm, an AI-assisted decompilation enthusiast, who summed it up without ceremony: “Anthropic is going after video game re-creations.” Next rounded up the story on 3 November.

Two sentences and a line drawn in crayon

The instruction is short: “Create original games, games in a given genre and games built from the user’s concepts and assets. Do not create a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or presented as original.” A roguelike? Go ahead. A carbon copy of a hit roguelike with a different name on the box? No. The “even if it is renamed” clause shows that Anthropic knows exactly which trick everyone would try first. It’s the oldest move in the book, the same one as copying a classmate’s homework and writing your own name at the top.

Three days after the text appeared, Addy Osmani, an engineer at Anthropic, confirmed that it exists. The same day, the change showed up in version 2.1.314 of Claude Code. He says the goal is to stop Opus 5.5 from “recreating a specific game that belongs to someone else, because using Claude to infringe intellectual property rights goes against our usage policies”. He adds that “creating original games, games in a given genre and games designed from your own concepts and assets should keep working”.

Rules that arrive over the air

The rule doesn’t come through an update you chose to install. Anthropic has a mechanism for adjusting Claude’s instructions remotely, and it has already been used for other instructions. XDA found a second channel specific to Opus 5.5, which is currently Claude Code’s default model. That means the restriction could apply in two ways: directly to the model, or to every model used in the tool. Your coding assistant can rewrite its house rules while you sleep. That’s handy right up until the morning the new rules land on your project.

Friendly fire

And for some people, they already have. The designer behind the Conflict Simulations wargames says the rule is blocking their business. They adapt board games on commission for clients who own the originals. The code is written from scratch using material those clients supply, and Claude Code still refuses to finish the job.

The client holds the rights, the contractor has a signed contract, and the model has a bad feeling about it. A language model doesn’t read the licence agreement attached to the ticket. It recognises an existing game, rereads its instructions and downs tools. Addy Osmani invites developers to report cases where Claude refuses to help with something that belongs to them. That’s fair enough, but it’s a suggestion box where you’d want a rule that can tell a customer from a copycat.

Bolting the front door, leaving the back one wide open

The problem it’s aimed at is very real. For months, a wave of AI-generated clones has been rolling in. Some studios, often the smallest, now hesitate to release demos or betas for fear of having their ideas lifted. Next had already covered this on 29 October, in a piece on AI filling up Steam’s shelves.

But as Next points out, the rule is unlikely to slow things down much. A determined cloner can switch to another LLM without these restrictions, or even to a modified open-weight model. According to Next, the rule also serves, and perhaps mainly serves, to shield Anthropic from copyright infringement claims. The company already has its hands full on that front with authors and record labels, and it probably has no wish to add game studios to the queue.

The cloner in a hurry will switch tools before the kettle boils. The honest contractor gets to fill in a form.