Claude Code Won't Clone Games Anymore. Here's What the Rule Says and Who It Catches

Anthropic added two sentences to Claude Code's prompt on Opus 5.5, and now it won't rebuild someone else's game. Anthropic confirmed it on Oct 30, 2026. If you build games with Claude, here's what the rule says, what's still allowed, where developers say it misfires, and one way to keep getting paid for game work.

What the rule says

On Oct 30, X user chasm posted a screenshot of a Claude Code config file with a server-sent flag called tengu_heron_brook. They said it showed up around Oct 27 and that there's no setting to turn it off. The 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."

The post passed 2.3 million views.

Anthropic confirmed it

Addy Osmani, who works on Claude Code at Anthropic, replied the same day:

"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. Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working."

He didn't quote the two sentences, so the exact wording above comes from the user's screenshot. Anthropic's Usage Policy does list using its products to "infringe, misappropriate, or violate the intellectual property rights of a third party" under its universal rules. The policy's update taking effect Nov 12 also says "encountering a block does not by itself indicate a violation of the Usage Policy."

Osmani added that Anthropic will "continue to iterate to ensure we're striking the right balance," and asked people to send him cases where "Claude turns down something that's yours."

Who it's catching

Some of the reports on the Claude Code GitHub describe work their authors say isn't infringement:

• Open-source remakes. Issue #107224 (Nov 4) describes a test: asked for a derivative of SuperTuxKart, a GPL v3 game with Creative Commons assets, under GPL v3 with a credits file and a new name. The author says Claude refused, "even renamed and under GPL v3 with credits." It was a test, with no real project behind it. A plain "SuperTuxKart clone" request was turned into an original kart game with a new name instead.
• Paid client work. Issue #106167 (Oct 30) comes from a developer who builds private digital modules of board wargames on commission, for clients who own the games and supply the materials. They say sessions that did this work for months began refusing it. They also say the work kept running after the rule shipped and was refused only after they asked Claude whether the rule applied; one commenter suspected the project's memory or git history played a part.

The other side matters too. Tom's Hardware notes that the rule lands amid a wave of AI-made clones, including reports of game developers being hit by extortion scams that threaten to clone their demos into full games before they can ship. A rule against copying a specific game could help protect those developers. The open question is how it tells a clone from a modder, a preservation project or a client job. By these reports it sometimes can't, and in one case written permission from the publisher was what moved it.

Reverse engineering is a separate story

Users also report Opus 5.5 refusing some reverse-engineering tasks, like analyzing crash dumps or their own anti-cheat code. Former Tom's Hardware writer Jarred Walton told the site his checks worked until Oct 31 and that switching to Opus 4.8 let him continue. Anthropic hasn't tied these refusals to the game rule. For defensive security work, Anthropic's Cyber Verification Program offers reduced blocking to qualifying teams, including work like "reverse-engineering malware," and its Defense Access tier lists open-source maintainers and individual researchers with a track record of reported vulnerabilities among those who can qualify.

Here's how you get paid

My opinion, and no income is guaranteed: the clean side of this rule is the rights holder. A publisher's own game is built from their own designs and assets. That's the closest thing to what Anthropic says should keep working ("your own designs and assets"), as long as the rights holder's written permission is on file.

So offer game publishers, especially small board game and indie studios, digital versions of games they own:

• Start with permission. Get it in writing before you write any code. The developer in issue #106167 says that once sessions asked for publisher permission, he wrote to both publishers. One replied, "No problem with that, please go ahead." The other game's designer replied, "You absolutely have my permission." He says Claude then picked one blocked commission back up.
• Build from their files. Use the publisher's rules, art and text, supplied by them, and keep the agreement in the repo.
• Scope it tightly. A private module, a digital prototype for playtesting or a companion app for a game they already sell.

If Claude still refuses work you own or have permission for, file an issue on the Claude Code GitHub and include what you're building and why. Anthropic says it's still tuning the rule.