Anthropic has told Claude Code to stop recreating specific existing video games, but developers say the restrictions are also getting in the way of work they believe they have a right to do. One small business owner says paid client projects have been stopped midway through development.
The company says original games should still be allowed. Its confirmed change consists of two sentences added to Claude Code's prompt on Opus 5.5, intended to steer the tool away from copying somebody else's game.
An Anthropic spokesperson directed Game Developer to a statement from technical staff member Addy Osmani. In the publication's updated report, he said:
Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working. We'll continue to iterate to ensure we're striking the right balance.
Osmani also invited developers to send him examples when Claude rejects something that belongs to them.
That confirmation matters because early coverage described an unannounced restriction. A user posting as Chasm had reported on October 30 that Claude was receiving a new instruction from Anthropic's servers, apparently introduced around October 27. Anthropic's response confirmed the prompt change, rather than leaving the story dependent on that user's account.
A developer says paid work has stalled
The most detailed complaint comes from GitHub user lerugray, who says they run Conflict Simulations LLC. The business builds personalized digital versions of board wargames for individual clients who own the physical games.
In an October 30 complaint, the developer said the code was written from scratch using client-supplied materials and that the resulting modules were not distributed publicly. They wrote:
A blanket category rule against "games" cannot tell the difference between piracy and commissioned professional work for a game's owner, and in practice it has shut down active paid client projects.
The developer later corrected an important part of the original description: the work was not licensed by the games' publishers. They said clients provided proof of ownership, the modules were for personal use, and they honored publishers' and designers' requests to opt out.
Those are the developer's claims about the work and its purpose. Owning a physical game and holding permission from its copyright owner are different things; this complaint does not establish a legal finding either way.
The developer also described an odd sequence. Their sessions continued working after the rule reportedly arrived. Refusals began after they asked Claude to check whether the restriction affected the projects, and then persisted in new sessions using the same repositories.
That account raises a question about how the model applies the instruction, but it isn't a confirmed explanation of the cause. Another commenter suggested the project's saved context might be involved. The developer said they would investigate that possibility.
Some refusals involve a different safeguard
Other complaints concern game security work. In an October 15 report, a developer said Claude repeatedly flagged attempts to review vulnerabilities in their own game, despite being told to stay within the supplied project directory.
Another user reported on October 26 that a request to build anti-cheat protection had been classified as cyber work. Both reports predate the reported October 27 introduction of the game-recreation instruction, so they cannot simply be treated as examples caused by that change.
The distinction matters to developers trying to get help: a refusal about copying an existing title and a refusal triggered by cybersecurity safeguards may require different reviews.
The Conflict Simulations owner has asked Anthropic for a professional verification route, clearer documentation of server-delivered changes and guidance on exactly what triggers the restriction. They say support tickets reached human staff and a safeguards appeal was filed. The public complaint remained open on Sunday.