ChatGPT employee’s vibecoded Old School RuneScape ripoff lived for three days

We might have a new record for the shortest length of time for an MMO to release and then shut down, which would normally be a sad moment but for the fact that this is related to some AI vibecoded slop. This is the story of Elderwood, a game “created” by a ChatGPT employee that faced what must be one of the fastest legal orbital strikes in gaming history.

Rohan Varma, who works on ChatGPT’s Codex coding tool, proudly showed off the creation on Twitter this past Sunday, openly inviting players to join in on the MMO on a website, proudly crowing about how the Astra tool quickly made a 30-second sizzle reel, and boasting about the fact that Elderwood’s creation took only about 20 prompts at a low cost.

On September 9th, the game was told to shutter. “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 announcement reads. “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.”

In spite of the teary-eyed (and suspected AI-generated) goodbye, fans on the RuneScape subreddit celebrated the game’s swift end. “‘A joy to build’ yeah man I’m sure typing a bunch of prompts into Claude was a f**king thrill,” reads one reply. “Good riddance for the rat AI slopper acting like he did something or created something,” reads another.

Our favorite, though, is one Redditor who wrote, “This stupid project got 1000 times more attention as a result of this sub and we’re all dumber for having learned of it,” though replies to that post point out how that attention likely helped get the game on Jagex’s radar. Either way, we can clearly see where the studio stands, at least on a copyright grounds level.

sources: Twitter, Elderwood site, and Reddit via GamesRadar