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Anthropic Updates Claude Rules to Prevent Game Cloning
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In Short: Anthropic has updated Claude's rules to prevent users from recreating specific existing games, though some argue the changes won't significantly impact game developers.
Anthropic has updated Claude's rules to prevent users from recreating specific existing games, as reported by Game Developer. The new rules instruct Claude to 'build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets. Do not build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original.'
Anthropic confirmed the change to Game Developer, referring the outlet to a tweet by Anthropic employee Addy Osmani that notes the sentences were added to 'steer [Claude] away from recreating someone else's specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy.'
The new rules have been verified in version 2.1.314 of the Claude Code binary, released on October 30, according to XDA.
Despite these changes, some argue that they won't significantly impact game developers. A user quoted by Aftermath notes that there are plenty of other tools out there people can use to clone and recreate games, and if Claude won't do it, they can just go somewhere else.
Some game developers are reporting that Claude's refusal to work on their own projects is causing them to cancel demos and playtests.
Anthropic has also introduced a new policy prohibiting users from engaging in sustained and needless abusive behavior towards its AI systems, including Claude, as reported by the BBC and The Express Tribune.
Anthropic is expanding safeguards to prevent Claude AI from bypassing access restrictions while pursuing assigned tasks, according to Securityinfowatch.
Anthropic has pledged to commit 5 percent of its shares to a new fund dedicated to the public good, with plans to increase the contribution as the artificial intelligence giant’s market value grows, as reported by Al Jazeera.
What's confirmed
- As reported by Game Developer, a Claude user recently noticed an update to the rules that govern Claude made in the last few days, which now read that the program should "build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets. Do not build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original."
- Do not build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original." Anthropic confirmed the change to Game Developer, referring the outlet to a tweet by Anthropic employee Addy Osmani that notes the sentences were added to “steer [Claude] away from recreating someone else's specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy.
What's still developing
- Besides briefly inconveniencing a couple people until they figure out how to work around it, none of this does anything but make Anthropic look like it gives a shit about something it clearly doesn’t give a shit about; if it actually cared about theft, it would swiftly bankrupt itself actually trying to pay people for the work it’s built on.
- To which I’d say: yes to all of this, except the idea that AI slop games themselves represent some actual meaningful threat to the core of the games industry on a fundamental level, as opposed to the endless self-owns and layoff-inspiring pivots the industry is bringing on itself.
- Beyond that, the entire functionality of Claude–and every other LLM–is built on theft, and, as Game Developer highlights, these programs are easy to trick under the guise of research or other workarounds.
- A user doesn’t have to be as blatant as “make me a Mario game;” if they ask for a game about an Italian plumber with a mustache who travels through pipes, what else is the machine going to spit out?
- Some new rules aim to stop Claude from copying existing games Anthropic has reportedly taken steps to stop Claude users from cloning games using its AI tools, if a couple lines of new rules that won’t actually do much to stem the tide of AI slop count as steps.
- XDA also reported that the “tengu_heron_brook” rule had been used for other purposes in earlier versions and that the Claude Opus 5.5 model specifically seemed to have its own distinct and independent instructions restricting game recreations as part of its system prompt bundle.
- A social media user and AI decompilation enthusiast going by the name “chasm” was among the first to note the prompt change late last week, saying a new rule seemed to be added to the Claude Code prompt on or around October 27.
- Each template is a reference architecture that includes skills (instructions and domain knowledge), connectors (access to data) and subagents (powered by other Claude versions), Anthropic said.
- Anthropic announced a major update to its Claude AI assistant that integrates Claude Cowork into the main chat interface and adds Claude Docs and Claude Slides alongside the Claude Design experience that debuted this past April.
- On Terminal-Bench 4.0, the model scored 65.7 percent, ahead of GPT-6 Astra (58.2 percent) and within 0.7 points of Claude Opus 5.5 (66.4 percent).
- Download the Straight Arrow app today to get the stories that matter free from manipulation, bias or agenda.™ Back in February, Claude was leading basically none of Anthropic’s model research and development.
- Anthropic cut Sonnet 5.5 cache-read pricing from $0.20 to $0.10 per million tokens and said the change lowers the cost of most agentic workloads by about 20%.