I want my coding agent to do what I ask

Last week some people asked Claude Code to build a game and got pushback instead of code.

Addy Osmani explained what happened. Anthropic added a short rule to the Opus 5.5 prompt in Claude Code to steer it away from recreating specific existing games, because using Claude to infringe IP is against their usage policy. The rule also fired when people named a game just to describe the mechanics they wanted, like “a puzzle game where blocks fall and you clear lines”.

Version 2.1.317 narrows it. You can name a game to describe what you want, and Claude builds an original game in that genre. If you ask for a copy of the original, it offers to build something similar instead.

So the bug is fixed. I still don’t like the rule.

“You’re not law enforcement”

One reply from Stephane says what I think. Copyright law doesn’t work that way, Anthropic isn’t law enforcement, and if a game company doesn’t like what he built, they can sue him. Another reply says this “isn’t how copyright law works and is incredibly damaging”.

Stephane also brings up VHS tapes. That’s the Betamax case: in 1984 the US Supreme Court ruled that Sony wasn’t liable for people taping TV shows with its VCRs, because the machine had substantial legal uses. The person using the tool is responsible for what they do with it, and the courts sort it out after the fact.

That’s how it works for every other tool I use. My editor doesn’t check whether the code I type looks too much like someone else’s. Git doesn’t refuse to clone a repo because of its license. Photoshop opens any image. If I break the law with them, that’s on me.

Even when the line is right

To be fair, the narrowed rule draws the line roughly where copyright law does.

Copyright doesn’t protect game mechanics. The US Copyright Office says it doesn’t protect the idea for a game, its name, or the method of playing it. That’s why we have hundreds of falling-block puzzle games and roguelikes. What it protects is the expression: the art, the music, the characters, the levels. In 2012 a US court ruled against a clone called Mino because it copied the look of Tetris so closely that it was the same game with a new name.

But a court makes that call with the finished work in front of it, and with context. An agent makes it up front, from one sentence. It doesn’t know if I’m cloning a game to learn how it was made, if I’ll never publish it, or if I own the original. It guesses, and last week it guessed wrong often enough that Anthropic had to ship a fix.

So even with a good line, I don’t want the tool to be the one holding it.

Who pays for the rules

Every rule like this has a cost, and the person writing it doesn’t pay it. I do, in time spent arguing with a tool I’m paying for, about something I’m allowed to do.

And it doesn’t stop at games. Each of these rules is a couple of sentences in a system prompt, and they add up. The more of them there are, the more the agent second-guesses me in places nobody intended. Stephane calls it “more slop in the system prompts”. Harsh, but I agree with the direction.

I understand why Anthropic does it. They have a usage policy and their own legal exposure, and the agent is the one writing the code. But I’d rather they deal with that in their terms of service, like every other tool maker does, and let the tool work.

What I’d want

Do what I ask. If something looks like a direct copy of an existing game, a one-line note is fine: “the art and characters of this game are protected, keep that in mind if you publish it”. Then build it, and let me decide.

Addy’s post ends by asking people to report it when Claude turns down work that’s theirs. If it happens to you, tell them, with the prompt you used. That’s the only way these rules get loosened.

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