Anthropic says it updated Claude Code to avoid video game clones
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Anthropic updated Claude Code’s system prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer the tool away from recreating specific games made by others, saying that using Claude to infringe intellectual property violates its usage policy. Company engineer Addy Osmani said original games, games in a genre, and projects based on users’ own designs and assets should remain allowed. Ars Technica reports that the rule also appears in Claude Code version 2.1.314, based on independent verification by XDA, although reports on Anthropic’s GitHub suggest it has interfered with some legitimate uses.\n\nThe change comes amid a wave of AI-assisted decompilation and porting projects involving older games. According to Ars Technica, the increase in these projects contributed to the shutdown of decomp.dev, a community dedicated to decompilation whose maintainer said the community aspect of the work had been undermined.
Why it matters · editorial interpretation
The change puts intellectual-property limits directly into a coding tool’s workflow, but reports cited by Ars Technica suggest the filters may also affect legitimate uses. The case illustrates the tension between allowing original projects and restricting recreations of specific works in decompilation and porting efforts.
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