Claude Code Will No Longer Clone Existing Games

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI models, has updated the system prompt for Claude Code, its AI coding tool, for the Opus 5.5 model. The agent is now told directly not to recreate a specific existing video game, even if the user calls their version "original." Building a game within a genre, or from the user's own idea, is still allowed. Anthropic engineer Addy Osmani explained the change. Using Claude to infringe on someone else's intellectual property goes against the company's usage policy, he said, and the team will keep tuning the balance between blocking clones and allowing normal development.

For anyone building a game with the agent from scratch, nothing changes. Genre projects and fully original ideas still get built the same way as before. The rule only blocks a direct copy of a specific existing release that gets passed off as a new game. It looks like a sensible move on Anthropic's part. Retro game development has already been flooded with AI-made ports and decompiled copies of other people's games, and this line separates real development from copying.