Anthropic added two instructions to Claude Code‘s Opus 5.5 prompt to block the tool from recreating specific existing games. The rationale was direct: using Claude to infringe on a protected title violates the company’s usage policy.
Addy Osmani, an Anthropic technical staff member, confirmed the change. “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,” Osmani said, as reported by Game Developer.
What Was Supposed to Stay Working
Anthropic says original projects, genre-based games, and work using a developer’s own assets should be unaffected.
Osmani was clear about the intended scope. “Original games, genre games, and games built from the user’s own designs and assets are meant to keep working,” he said, as reported by GamesBeat.
He also said Anthropic would keep refining the system to find a better balance.
Where the Refusals Are Landing
Developers report blocks on reverse engineering, modding, crash analysis, and debugging work that has nothing to do with cloning a commercial title.
Developers are reporting refusals on tasks including reverse engineering, decompilation, crash-dump analysis, anti-cheat development, and debugging their own projects, according to reporting from ProPakistani and Videocardz. These activities are legally and technically distinct from copying a commercial game.
Reverse engineering can support interoperability, security testing, preservation, and authorized modding. Whether it is legal depends on jurisdiction, licensing terms, and the specific techniques used.
The Model Can’t Check Your Credentials
Anthropic has not publicly documented an ownership-verification mechanism, which creates a reported risk of false positives.
Anthropic has not publicly described a reliable ownership-verification mechanism for this workflow. When a request references an existing game title or involves reverse engineering, the model appears to evaluate it based on those surface signals rather than confirmed intent or authorization, according to Videocardz.
That creates a risk of false positives for developers working on software they own or are authorized to analyze.
Inconsistent Boundaries
Testing found Claude refused some requests while assisting with others, suggesting the restriction’s reach is not fully predictable.
Testing reported by XDA Developers via ShiftDelete showed Claude refused to recreate PokĂ©mon Diamond. The same session did assist with a decompilation project involving disassembled functions, ROM rebuilding from the user’s own copy, and native recompilation tooling.
The restriction is not a blanket ban on game-adjacent work, but its boundaries are not consistent. Other reported refusals involving reverse-engineering tools and general troubleshooting remain anecdotal, and it is not confirmed that every flagged request came specifically from the new game instruction rather than other Claude behavior.
No Override Available
Developers caught by false positives have no in-tool option based on published reports, leaving tool replacement as the only documented workaround.
No user setting to disable the restriction has been identified in published reports, according to Dev.to. Published reports have not identified an in-tool override for developers whose legitimate work is affected.
Anthropic has not published a mechanism for ownership verification. It remains unclear how widespread the refusals are, which prompts trigger them, or whether specific false positives have already been corrected. Osmani said the company intends to keep refining the system.
