# Software Is Dead—Unless Anthropic Says Otherwise > Source: > Published: 2026-11-02 19:25:12+00:00 Having hoovered up basically the entire world of literature, music, and visual art, the insatiable AI behemoth has moved on to software. There’s been a constant barrage of headlines over the last few weeks about the latest piece of software to get a vibe-coded “clone”: [entire games](https://gizmodo.com/browser-based-grand-theft-auto-v-shows-how-ai-is-making-it-easy-to-illegally-port-games-to-new-platforms-2000822395), big-ticket [software](https://gizmodo.com/someone-vibe-coded-a-free-knockoff-of-adobe-creative-suite-2000823322) [packages](https://decrypt.co/380991/developer-cloned-photoshop-ai-just-did-same-microsoft-office), and everything in between. These projects have stepped on some of the biggest toes in the world of software development, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the end of the party appears to be imminent. This weekend brought the [news](https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/anthropic-adds-new-claude-rule-banning-recreations-of-existing-games-3423516/) that Anthropic is adding a rule that prevents Claude, its AI-powered coding assistant, from participating in the wholesale recreation of existing games. The rule tells Claude that it can “build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets,” but it cannot “build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original.” Addy Osmani, who is Anthropic’s, um, “Engineering and Evangelism Leader,” confirmed the change via a post on Twitter. Clutching his pearls tightly to his chest, Osmani wrote, “We added two sentences to Claude Code’s prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else’s specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy.” We added two sentences to Claude Code's prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else's specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy. Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to… — Addy Osmani (@addyosmani) [October 30, 2026](https://x.com/addyosmani/status/2116213240363729013?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Did you hear that? Infringing IP is against Anthropic’s usage policy! Still, despite that unimpeachable usage policy, cynics might note that AI companies are proving a whole lot more willing to put guardrails in place around vibe-coded software cloning than they were around, y’know, the wholesale theft of people’s work for training purposes. But beyond that particular piece of hypocrisy, it’s also worth paying attention to the way this rule is implemented. There are two ways a condition like this could be drafted: by specifying what can be done, and by specifying what *can’t*. The first starts from a blanket rule of “do nothing” and creates specific exceptions for what’s permissible; the second starts from a blanket rule of “do everything” and then creates exceptions for what *isn’t.* This is a subtle but important difference. Imagine you’re telling a child what they can do after school. Would you say: “You can go to your friend’s house if you like, or you can go and play basketball, but either way you have to be home before 4pm”? Or would you say, “You can do absolutely anything you want *except* getting home after 4pm?” The former makes it very clear what’s required; the latter is clearly a recipe for disaster: “You didn’t tell me I wasn’t supposed to steal someone’s bicycle and ride it into the lake!” Anthropic uses the second approach here, and as a result, they create the necessity to anticipate and put specific prohibitions on every potential naughty use for Claude. This means that things will inevitably slip through the cracks. For a start, there’s the ever-present potential for semantic trickery: if the only guardrail is not “build[ing] a recreation of a specific existing game,” what about a specific non-existing game, i.e. one that hasn’t been released yet? “Build me *The Witcher 4*.” What about a knockoff of an entire IP that doesn’t Xerox one game and one game only? And the most obvious question: what about a specific existing piece of software that’s not a game? It’s unclear why this carve-out applies to games only—it’s hard to imagine that Adobe or Microsoft are delighted by the idea of people vibe-coding knockoff versions of their very expensive industry-standard subscription software, and I’m sure that sooner rather than later we’ll see this rule amended or extended to encompass existing products from companies with pockets deep enough for Anthropic to take seriously. Those companies might get an exception written into Claude, just for them: after all, if you’re a huge company with a battalion of lawyers, you might find Anthropic to be receptive to your arguments. If you’re a pleb, you’re probably going to be out of luck. Again.