Anthropic Limits Claude Code From Recreating Existing Games

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Anthropic has updated Claude Code, its AI coding assistant, to stop it from recreating specific existing games, following growing concern among independent developers that AI tools are being used to clone and publish games before the originals are released.

The change was first spotted by an X user known as Chasm, who reported that Anthropic added the restriction around October 27 under an internal flag called “tengu_heron_brook.” According to Game Developer, the new instruction tells Claude Code to build original games, games within a genre, and games based on a user’s own designs and assets, but not to recreate a specific existing game—even if it is renamed or described as original. Users cannot disable the rule.

Anthropic’s response

An Anthropic spokesperson directed reporters to a statement from Addy Osmani, a member of Anthropic’s technical staff, on X.

“We 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 wrote. He added that Anthropic intends for original games, genre-based games, and games created from a user’s own designs to continue working, and said the company would keep refining the policy to balance protection and usability.

The restriction is not foolproof. A developer at Conflict Simulations LLC said in a GitHub issue that Claude refused to help with board-wargame adaptations the developer said were licensed, though the exact cause remains unclear. Critics also note that users seeking to make clones may circumvent such safeguards through reworded prompts or by using open-weight AI models without similar restrictions.

Developers pull back demos

The update follows a wave of concern after PC Gamer linked a recent increase in quickly produced clones and decompiled games on Steam and Roblox to the release of Claude Opus 5.5.

Spanish studio Digital Sun, known for Moonlighter, cancelled a public Steam playtest for its upcoming game ReVamp. The studio said it was “concerned by recent news of games being reverse-engineered, cloned and published before the original is even out.”

Instead, Digital Sun launched a smaller playtest through Discord on October 29. It hopes to hold a broader public test around January, before ReVamp launches on March 25, 2027. Alliance Arts, another developer, also delayed a planned demo because of cloning concerns.

Pressure on storefronts

Independent developers have increasingly asked Valve how Steam plans to prevent clones from crowding out original games. This week, Valve offered developers in South Korea a rare explanation of its approach.

A GamesIndustry.biz opinion piece argued that Steam’s open publishing model—where developers can release games after paying a small fee—“is on the verge of collapse” as generative AI makes it cheaper and faster to flood the platform with low-quality imitations.

Digital Sun captured the dilemma facing smaller studios: “Showing games early is how indies get seen and find the fans who keep us going, so we hope platforms keep strengthening protections for original work.”