Anthropic tells Claude to stop recreating specific existing games

Anthropic has added a rule to Claude Code on its Opus 5.5 model that steers it away from recreating other people's games, PC Gamer and Kotaku report. The rule reads: "Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user's own designs and assets. Do not build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original."

An X user named Chasm spotted the rule, which Kotaku says arrived around 27 Oct from Anthropic's servers under a flag called "tengu_heron_brook", with no setting to turn it off. Anthropic's Addy Osmani then confirmed it on X. "We added two sentences to Claude Code's prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else's specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy," he wrote, adding that original games, genre games and games from your own designs "are meant to keep working".

PC Gamer says the change follows reports from developers whose games and demos were copied with AI help, with some studios cancelling public demos. Steam has also seen a flood of low-effort AI games. Kotaku notes some users say Claude now refuses other tasks too, from reverse engineering to reading unlicensed translations. Osmani says Anthropic will keep adjusting the balance, and asked developers to send him cases where Claude turns down their own work.