Anthropic loosens Claude Code's game-copying rule in 2.1.317
The fix landed, the complaint about server-side prompt edits did not go away.
Addy Osmani says the rule that had Claude Code pushing back on game projects was updated in 2.1.317. You can name an existing game to describe the mechanics you want and Claude should now build an original game in that genre. Ask for a copy of the original and it will offer to build something similar instead.
The rule itself was a short addition to the Opus 5.5 prompt, meant to steer Claude away from recreating specific existing games. By Osmani's own account it was also firing when people mentioned a game only as shorthand for how something should play, which is what users ran into last week. He frames the two goals as helping people build something original while protecting their work if someone else tries to copy it, and asks for reports when Claude turns down work that is yours.
The objection survived the fix
Theo was not placated by the patch. He called the whole arc of system prompt changes aimed at steering away from copyright issues lame as hell, and said it is a stain on what he otherwise described as a generational run from Anthropic lately.
Ryan Florence went further on principle, comparing the behavior to a pencil that refuses to draw Iron Man and calling the approach misguided.
For working engineers
The interesting part is not whether this particular rule is tuned correctly. It is that the rule arrived as a change to a prompt on Anthropic's side, applied to an installed CLI, and then went away the same way, with a version number attached only after the fact. Nobody in these posts points to a setting that turns that steering off or pins it, and nothing in Osmani's note suggests one exists.
That is the shape of the complaint. If your agent's refusals can shift between Tuesday and Thursday without you upgrading anything deliberately, the behavior you tested against is not the behavior you have. Osmani's phrasing, that Anthropic will keep improving this, is honest about the fact that more edits are coming. If you are building on top of Claude Code and relying on it not to balk at a category of request, the practical takeaway is to keep a record of what it refused and when, because the model prompt is a moving dependency you do not control and cannot version.
Imagine a pencil that wouldn't let you draw a picture of iron man.
I think this whole arc of system prompt changes to steer away from "copyright issues" is lame as hell.
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