Anthropic no longer wants Claude to copy video games.

Since the arrival of Claude Sonnet 5.5, everything is moving faster: this AI model does everything faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost. A perfect model for creating video games, or for copying them.And that is precisely what Anthropic no longer wants to allow: the company updated Claude without saying so to prevent users from copying video games that do not belong to them.

Two sentences that change everything: how Anthropic wants to block its Claude

It was a user named chasm who noticed the change, as he explained on X. He says that Claude Code (the version of the chatbot dedicated to computer programming) reportedly received a new rule "around October 27." A rule that, unlike others, cannot be disabled. It reads: "Create original games, games in a genre, and games based on the user's own designs and assets. Do not create a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or described as original."

ANTHROPIC IS CRACKING DOWN ON VIDEO GAME REWRITES 🚨

Claude Code picked up a new rule around Oct 27, sent from Anthropic’s servers under a flag called "tengu_heron_brook".There’s no setting to turn it off.

The full rule: “Do build original games, games in a genre, and games… pic.twitter.com/0Zc5mQWHJt

— chasm (@chasmmmmmmmmmmm) October 30, 2026

Following this tweet, a member of Anthropic’s technical team, Addy Osmani, provided an explanation: “using Claude to infringe intellectual property goes against our usage policy.” But he assures us that, “original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are intended to continue to work.” Without saying so, Anthropic is also making sure not to be sued by video game publishers who might accuse the company of having allowed Claude Code users to plagiarize their games.

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…

— Addy Osmani (@addyosmani) October 30, 2026

On X, however, several netizens point to this absurd situation, in that Anthropic itself is accused of copyright infringement. Anthropic had, for example, reached a $1.5 billion agreement after being accused of having “looted” approximately seven million books to train Claude.Same thing in early 2026: a complaint was filed by publishers of music tracks. They accuse Anthropic of using more than 20,000 songs without authorization to train its AI.

Is it the end of video games and AI modding?

Anthropic made this decision in a rather sensitive context: a few weeks ago, the company had launched Claude Sonnet 5.5, its very latest model, which became available in Claude Code. And for the past few weeks, dozens of games, both recent and old, have been decompiled left and right, for example to make them run in another language. These decompilations then make it possible to do whatever you want with them: run them directly in a browser (for free), port them to any device, modify them, or even combine them.

For example, we saw Minecraft “ run ” alongside GTA V and many other games. This raises a huge issue regarding intellectual property : none of these uses are permitted by the publishers of these titles. The same goes for software: a user has recreated Adobe and Microsoft suites in completely free versions.

The company is therefore trying to stop the bleeding with this new rule, which is intended to prevent these decompilations and derivative works, which are technically recreations made with Claude Code.Sometimes in just a few hours, with technical skills that are increasingly less demanding as methods are shared online.

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Source: Engadget