Anthropic Bans Game Clones – Hits Innocent Devs

🔥 What happened Anthropic quietly changed the system prompt for Claude Code and Opus 5.5 to forbid rebuilding existing games – even under a different name. But the rule is backfiring: developers on GitHub report Claude now refuses legitimate work like reverse-engineering game mechanics or patching game code. 💡 Why it matters Anthropic is trying to dodge copyright lawsuits, but the blunt rule hits the wrong targets – users say Claude even balks at analyzing Windows crashes or stripping junkware from a smart TV. That's a warning for anyone building on Claude Code: prompt-level legal guardrails are brittle and hard to scope. ⚡ Our take A classic overfitted guardrail: fear of litigation produces a filter that punishes innocent devs. Anthropic promising to "rebalance" is nice, but a system prompt is not a legal system.