A clone of Old School RuneScape that appeared on the internet this week, and stoked the ire of the RuneScape community, has quickly been shut down.
The clone was made by e OpenAI employee Rohan Varma, who used the GPT-6 Astra to build a version of RuneScape he named Elderwood, which was playable in a browser.
In a video – itself created with gen-AI – uploaded to X, we see a character created and spawning outside Lumbridge castle, with an inventory of bread, coins, and basic tools. We then see the same character fighting giant rats, chopping trees, and equipping steel armour. It looks incredibly similar to Old School RuneScape save for a few inconsistencies..
But as Verma continued to experiment and share their progress on X, the posts caught the attention of the Old School RuneScape community who were displeased with what they found. In a thread posted to the 2007scape Reddit, users were not shy in their criticisms.
“What in the vibe coded shit is this. They even straight up ripped art assets shameless,” wrote user RangeCreed. “Love the tweet format. AI bros can only speak in numbers and bullet lists (ideally both at once),” adds Lekamil, while X user Toppo simply summarised the situation with the following: “tl;dr garbage.”
The next day, following a spike in players after the aforementioned Reddit post, Elderwood was updated with “lots of content moderation”, but also two more areas from RuneScape: Varrock and Falador.
Fast-forward to last night and the game is taken down. In its place, a farewell message that reads as follows: “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.
“Elderwood began as a browser-based multiplayer adventure inspired by RuneScape. In a few short days, it grew into a shared world of exploration, skilling, quests, trading and duels—shaped along the way by the people who showed up to play and share ideas.
“Thank you to everyone who joined us. For the levels earned, the laughs in chat, the suggestions, the patience with bugs, and all the little moments in between: you made this a joy to build and a world worth sharing. “We’re keeping the high scores available as a record of what you achieved together.”
RuneScape players found this post as well, and scrutinised it. “Why [are] they acting as if they had some glorious adventure and legacy to leave behind lol,” wrote user Big_Necessary_5002, the most liked response in the thread.
The community’s response is unsurprising. Not only is it rough to see a game you love almost identically copied and regurgitated, but RuneScape players have been suffering the downsides of generative AI for some time now. AI agents can operate bots, potentially worsening a long-term problem the players and devs have been battling against for years.
If you’re interested in playing the real RuneScape, Jagex recently released two new quests to Old School. One is an adventure where you talk to crabs and organise a musical number, while the other lets you adopt stray dogs. Sometimes you just can’t beat the original.
