Claude Code Is Now Told Not to Clone Existing Video Games

Anthropic’s Claude Code now has a rule telling it not to recreate specific existing video games. Anthropic confirmed the change on October 30, 2026, saying it’s about intellectual property.

The new rule

X user Chasm spotted the rule, which they say Claude Code picked up around October 27 under a flag called tengu_heron_brook. The full text:

“Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets. Don’t build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original.”

Chasm says there’s no setting to turn it off. In other words, users can’t opt out of it themselves.

Anthropic confirms

Asked about it, an Anthropic spokesperson pointed Game Developer to a post from Anthropic’s Addy Osmani, who wrote that the team 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.”

Osmani said original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working, and that Anthropic will keep iterating to strike the right balance. If Claude turns down something that’s yours, he asked people to send it his way.

Why it matters

Game Developer reports that independent developers have grown worried about fast AI-made clones of their games. A prompt rule may only deter low-effort copycats, and it’s not clear how Claude could tell whether a user actually owns a game’s design or assets.