A browser game built by prompting an OpenAI coding tool to recreate RuneScape was taken offline on September 9, three days after it first appeared, following a takedown notice from Jagex. The game, Elderwood, was made by Rohan Varma, a developer on OpenAI's Codex project.
Varma built it by asking GPT-6 Astra in Codex to "build RuneScape", according to Dexerto, and the result grew into a multiplayer game with skilling, combat and trading. MassivelyOP reports that Varma said the project took roughly 20 prompts at low cost, and that he used the same tooling to produce a 30-second promotional reel for it.
PC Gamer, which saw screenshots posted to Varma's X profile, describes graphics and a user interface closely resembling Old School RuneScape, down to shared place names including Lumbridge. Varma described the project as an Old School RuneScape clone in some of his own posts. PC Gamer noted that Varma did not post video footage of the game in action.
Varma's first post about Elderwood went up on September 6. A day later a user on the Old School RuneScape subreddit drew attention to it and called for Jagex to issue a cease-and-desist, with most replies echoing that or criticising the game's quality and originality. Varma noted the same day that the project had seen "a spike in users earlier today because we accidentally went viral on the OSRS subreddit". He said 3,000 accounts had been created in the first 24 hours, with players logging more than 1,000 hours between them.
On September 9 the site was replaced with a farewell message headed "Thank you for the adventure".
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 thanked players for the levels earned and the laughs in chat, and said the site would stay up to host a leaderboard of the high scores set before the shutdown. Dexerto reported that Jagex had made no public comment on the closure, and that players on the Old School RuneScape subreddit welcomed the outcome.