Anthropic Blocks Claude From Rebuilding Existing Video Games

Anthropic has changed Claude so the chatbot will refuse to help users rebuild video games that already exist, according to Engadget. The update was spotted by a user on X and later confirmed by a company technical staffer on the same platform.

The new instructions tell the model to assist with fresh titles, games that fit within a genre, and projects built from a user's own designs and assets. It also directs Claude to decline requests to reproduce a particular existing title, including cases where the project is renamed or presented as original.

The staffer, Addy Osmani, wrote on X that the aim is to keep the tool away from copying someone else's specific game, noting that employing Claude to violate intellectual property rules goes against the company's usage policy. He added that original work, genre-based projects and games using a user's own assets should not be affected. Anthropic will keep refining the approach to find the right balance, he said.

The adjustment lands during a period of growing interest in AI-assisted ports of major commercial titles. Fan projects have recently brought big-budget releases to browsers, with AI tools used to decompile them, Engadget reported. Those efforts have drawn attention to how easily such tools can be pointed at protected works.

Anthropic has faced intellectual property disputes before. Last year the company agreed to a $1.5 billion class action settlement after 500,000 authors accused it of training its models on copyrighted material. That figure was described as a record. In a separate and later case, the Presley estate brought a lawsuit against the company on comparable grounds.

The Claude change applies to the model's behavior rather than to any specific title, and the company has not said how it will detect attempts to work around the restriction.