🎮Anthropic Blocks Claude From Cloning Existing Video Games With New Prompt

Your Claude Code game clones just got harder to ship

Anthropic just told Claude to stop cloning games. A new system prompt, added around October 27, bars Claude from building recreations of specific existing games, even if they're renamed or labeled original. If you're using Claude Code for side projects, this changes what you can ask for. Original games, genre games, and anything built from your own designs and assets are still fair game. Ask for a Mario clone with a new coat of paint and you'll hit a wall. The catch: the prompt is only as good as its ability to tell a clone from a genre game, and that line is blurry. The prompt shows up in version 2.1.314 of the Claude Code binary, released October 30. Claude Opus 5.5 carries its own separate restriction in its system prompt bundle, so this isn't a single-point patch. The motivation is clear: decomp.dev, a years-old game decompilation community, shut down last month, saying AI tools had broken the community aspect of decompilation. Worth watching: whether this holds up against vibe-coders who won't be as careful as Anthropic's guardrails assume.