Anthropic limited making copies of games in Claude Code — original games and projects in the same genre remain allowed

Anthropic added an instruction to Claude Code not to reproduce specific existing video games — even if a user renames the project or gives it an original title. At the same time, the tool should still help create original games, including in well‑known genres.

For developers, this means they can continue to work on games based on their own ideas and materials. The restriction is aimed at reproducing a specific existing game.

A representative of Anthropic also acknowledged the possibility of erroneous rejections and suggested reporting to him if Claude declines to work on a user’s own project.

The new instruction was first noticed by an X user. Later, the changes were confirmed by Anthropic technical team member Eddi Osmani.

What exactly did Anthropic change

According to Eddi Osmani, the company added two sentences to the Claude Code instructions for the Opus 5.5 model. They allow creating original games, games in a given genre, and projects based on a user’s own ideas and materials, but prohibit reproducing a specific existing game.

Osmani explained this by saying that using Claude to infringe intellectual property rights violates Anthropic’s policies. The company will continue to tweak the restriction to find a balance between protecting others’ works and helping creators of original games.

Fears about copying are already affecting how studios present their projects to players. For example, Digital Sun, known for Moonlighter, decided to restrict the initial testing of its new game ReVamp to its Discord community instead of offering broad public access.

The studio said the decision was driven by fears that its game could be reproduced using AI and a copy released ahead of the original. At that time, there were a few months left until ReVamp’s release.

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