Anthropic has updated Claude Code’s system prompt to steer the AI tool away from recreating specific existing video games. The change comes as AI-generated decompilations, recompilations and ports become increasingly common in retro gaming.
The company will continue to allow users to create original games, games within established genres and projects based on their own designs and assets. However, it does not want Claude used to produce direct clones of named games, even when those projects are described as original.
A user on X recently shared a screenshot that appeared to show two new instructions in Claude Code’s system prompt. The wording encouraged the creation of original games and projects using users’ own assets, while advising against recreating a specific existing game.
Anthropic executive Addy Osmani did not confirm that exact wording, but said the company had added two sentences to Claude Code’s prompt on Opus 5.5. He explained that the change was intended to prevent the tool from recreating someone else’s specific game because using Claude to infringe intellectual property violates Anthropic’s usage policy.
Osmani added that original games, genre-based projects and games built from users’ own designs and assets should continue to work. Anthropic plans to keep refining the system and has invited users to report cases in which Claude rejects a game that belongs to them.
The company has also been asked whether it plans to update other Claude system prompts in the same way.
Sources: The Verge.