Anthropic restricts cloning existing games in Claude Code
Anthropic is preventing its coding assistant Claude Code from replicating existing video games. Employee Addy Osmani confirmed on X that two sentences have been added to the Opus 5.5 system prompt to prevent cloning others' games, and that it triggers even if the clone is renamed or disguised as original work. The rule has been in effect for several days; users can still build their own games, works in the same genre, and projects using custom assets, but some have reported that original projects also ran into problems. The change comes after a surge of AI cloning projects, and Osmani said Anthropic plans to continue adjusting the relevant rules.
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Anthropic has added restrictive clauses to the Claude Code system prompt, giving readers a look at how AI coding tools are tightening their boundaries around intellectual property.
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Anthropic is blocking its coding assistant Claude Code from recreating existing video games. Employee Addy Osmani confirmed on X that two sentences in Claude Code's system prompt for Opus 5.5 now prevent the tool from cloning other people's games. Using Claude to infringe on intellectual property violates the usage policy, Osmani said.
The rule has been active for several days and kicks in even when a clone gets renamed or passed off as an original work. Users can still build their own games, genre titles, and projects with custom assets, though some report running into problems with original projects too.
The change follows a flood of AI-powered cloning projects. Users have been tapping Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra to crank out hundreds of unofficial browser ports of well-known titles like Halo and GTA Vice City. Tools like Reverse Engineer Anything help by pairing AI agents with reverse engineering to turn native binaries into readable pseudocode. One developer grabbed headlines by recreating parts of Adobe's Creative Cloud apps. Sony's PlayStation 5 also became a target after a jailbreak led to a quick wave of emulators.
After images and videos, the intellectual property battle is now spilling into software. Osmani said Anthropic plans to keep tweaking the rules going forward.