Anthropic Loosens Claude Code Rule That Blocked Projects Referencing Existing Games

The change arrived in Claude Code version 2.1.317. Addy Osmani, a member of Anthropic's technical staff, said on X that users can now name an existing game to describe what they are after, and Claude should then build an original game in that genre. "We've updated that rule in 2.1.317," he wrote. If a user explicitly asks for a copy, Claude will propose a similar original game instead. Requests to recreate a specific existing game will still be refused.

The episode shows how quickly an AI company's handling of intellectual property can reach working developers. The original rule was added to the assistant's instructions around October 27 and, according to developers who examined it on X, was delivered through a server-side flag. That meant it applied to every session without a software update and with no way for users to switch it off.

The instruction, as quoted by users on X, told the assistant not to build a recreation of a specific existing game "even if it is renamed or called original," while still allowing original games, genre games and games built from a user's own designs and assets. Developers reported that it also caught projects that merely mentioned other titles, including public-domain works. One user said Claude refused to reproduce The Landlord's Game, a 1904 board game whose copyright lapsed decades ago. Others objected that it ruled out benchmark-style recreations of games such as Minecraft, which are widely used to test coding models.

Osmani acknowledged the earlier instruction had been too aggressive but said that "using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy."

The restriction followed a run of AI-assisted browser recreations of commercial games. Digital Trends listed Halo: Combat Evolved, GTA: Vice City and The Simpsons: Hit & Run among them. Some smaller studios have reacted by limiting public access to unfinished work. Digital Sun, the developer of Moonlighter, postponed a public Steam playtest for its game ReVamp, and Alliance Arts cancelled a Steam Next Fest demo of Drunken Goddess Reflux, both citing fears that someone would reverse-engineer the game and publish a clone before release.

Anthropic has not published the full text of the revised instruction or explained how Claude decides whether a project is original, so it is not yet clear whether the change will stop the filter from interrupting work already in progress.