OpenAI employee Rohan Varma has taken down Elderwood, a browser-based clone of Jagex's RuneScape, following criticism from the game's community and an official cease-and-desist request from the developer.
Screenshots of Elderwood depicted a game with striking visual and user interface similarities to Old School RuneScape, including identical place names such as Lumbridge. Varma had explicitly described the project as an Old School RuneScape clone and developed it using OpenAI's Codex, an AI tool focused on coding. Varma first shared information about Elderwood on September 6. The following day, a post on the RuneScape subreddit drew attention to the clone, with many users urging Jagex to take action and criticizing the game's perceived lack of originality and quality. Varma himself noted a surge in users on September 7, attributing it to the project going viral on the RuneScape subreddit.
Elderwood was taken offline on September 9. A farewell message from Varma replaced the game, stating, "We received a notice from Jagex asking us to take down the website. Following that notice, we are discontinuing Elderwood’s operation, and the game is no longer available." The message further elaborated that Elderwood began as a browser-based multiplayer adventure inspired by RuneScape and had evolved into a shared world with exploration, skilling, quests, trading, and duels, shaped by player input.
Varma expressed gratitude to the players and indicated that a leaderboard of Elderwood's high scores would remain accessible. The author of the original report noted the rapid shutdown cycle of Elderwood, comparing it to the fate of many Nintendo fan games, but highlighted the crucial difference that Elderwood was not a purely non-commercial creative project but an advertisement for OpenAI's technology, raising concerns about copyright infringement. This incident has been characterized as an irresponsible demonstration of copyright infringement used as a form of advertising, particularly given OpenAI's existing scrutiny regarding its impact on creativity and intellectual property.