Anthropic has added guardrails to Claude Code to stop it recreating specific existing video games, Tom's Hardware reports. Anthropic's Addy Osmani wrote on X on Oct. 30 that the company "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," and that it will keep iterating to strike "the right balance." A rule posted by an X user, which Tom's Hardware says may be those sentences, reads: "Don't build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original."

Developers also report refusals on reverse-engineering work not tied to games. Tom's Hardware cites former staffer Jarred Walton, whose checks on his own software worked until Oct. 31 and ran again after he switched to the older Opus 4.8, and a Reddit user whose account was reportedly suspended and then reinstated. The game blocking appears limited to Claude Code with Opus 5.5, the outlet says.