Anthropic's Claude now blocks requests to rebuild a specific existing video game, even renamed. Original ideas and your own assets are still fine.
Claude, the AI model from Anthropic, will now refuse to build a copy of a specific existing video game, even if you rename it or call it original. According to Kotaku, the rule first appeared in Claude Opus 5.5's changelog on October 27.
The rule sits behind an internal flag called "tengu_heron_brook". It tells Claude to guard against requests for "a recreation of a specific existing game." Original games, games in a genre, and games built from your own designs and assets are still allowed. A plain racing game should be fine. A racing game "like Need For Speed" would trigger the guardrails.
It follows user complaints that Claude stopped working with Reverse Engineer Anything, a tool people used to decompile and open-source video games.
Some Reddit users say Claude now pushes back on other copyrighted material too. One said it refused to read an unlicensed translation of a web novel. Others complain about new "safety classifiers" limiting security research and published coding books. These are user reports, and the material does not include an explanation from Anthropic. Kotaku's writer guesses the company faced heat over how people used Claude, but calls that speculation.
If you use AI to build games or apps, start from your own ideas and assets, because copying a known title may now get blocked.
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