Well, reverse engineering is off the table at least for Claude.
The new rule is this “Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets. Don’t build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original.”
Addy Osmani, announced the changes recently “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.”
He stated that “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,” along with an offer: “In the meantime, if Claude turns down something that’s yours, send it my way.”
What it can’t do
So according to some, carefully worded requests routinely get around that kind of guardrail, and nothing in the implementation verifies whether a user actually owns the design or assets they claim to.
By Osmani’s own description it will apply to Claude Code’s prompt on Opus 5.5, not to every route into Anthropic’s models. And anyone blocked here can use open-weight models with no comparable restriction.
Anthropic hasn’t said whether similar rules are planned for software beyond games.
Where the line sits
The question the model now has to answer is about the specific title. A platformer is fine. That platformer is not.
Arguing the rule extends beyond decompilation into stopping users building original games influenced by existing ones. That’s a real ambiguity, since “influenced by” and “recreation of” are separated by judgment rather than a bright line.
Some see an overdue response to AI clones, others see an overreach that catches legitimate work, and both complaints point at the same imprecision.
Why now
Over the past few months many have produced AI-built remakes of existing and upcoming games, some for amusement and some for money, including a browser Halo that went viral.
Naturally developers have responded defensively. Digital Sun delayed a public playtest of ReVamp over concerns its demo could be fed into an AI tool. Valve has faced pressure to explain how it intends to stop AI-made clones crowding out original work on Steam.
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