No recreations, even if renamed
Anthropic's Claude Code has gained an instruction to decline recreating existing games. X user @chasmmmmmmmmmmm reported on Oct. 30 that since around Oct. 27, a new instruction had appeared in "tengu_heron_brook," a setting delivered from Anthropic's servers.
The instruction says Claude Code will build original games, genre games and games based on users' own designs and assets, but will not build recreations of specific existing games, even if renamed or described as original. Users reportedly cannot disable it through their settings.
Anthropic confirms adding two sentences
An Anthropic spokesperson pointed to an X post by Addy Osmani, a member of the company's technical staff. Osmani said two sentences had been added to Claude Code's instructions for Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating other people's specific games. He said original games, genre games and games users design themselves should continue to work, and that adjustments would continue. He also asked users to send him any tasks that were declined by mistake.
According to reports, Anthropic also said that using Claude to infringe intellectual property violates its terms of use.
Game industry fears of copying
In the game industry, some developers have canceled playable demos out of fear that released demos could be fed into AI and copied. Game Developer reported that several studios, including Digital Sun Games, which is developing the new title "ReVamp," have canceled public demos.
Others say legitimate work is being declined. On Oct. 30, a developer who builds digital versions of board games on commission from publishers filed a request on GitHub saying that even licensed work was being declined, and asked for instructions limited to actual infringement and an exception for professionals.
Hard to judge
Game Developer said the instruction may do little more than prevent casual copying. Users can sometimes get around the restriction by rephrasing requests, and it is unclear how the software would determine whether a user holds the rights to ideas or assets. Some users have also said that copying is still possible by switching to an open model without such restrictions.
