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To use your example, while you can't copy Harry Potter you are perfectly free to create your own story about a wizard school where the main character was unwillingly chosen by fate to destroy some dark lord who went into hiding but gets resurrected approximately 4/7ths of the way through the story. It would be a blatant ripoff of Harry Potter, people would understand that, but as long as you didn't directly copy any of the characters or events you couldn't be sued for that.
Now quick disclaimer; I've never played the Lethal Company clones on Roblox, so I don't know the extent of their "inspiration", but as far as copyright law is concerned they are free to do everything short of directly copy-paste the monsters in every way at once. Everything else is too generic to be copyrighted.
Now, the setting and execution of LC is under copyright protection, so if a game is about salvaging scraps of dangerous moons while being under the employement of a mysterious company while avoiding monsters is already in the red. Chances a court won't take it seriously, but it is a real possibility.
And the game's name is Deadly Company or something, which is infrigment on the game, since they are trying to profit off the popularity of the original product through recognition. Rippoffs aren't dodging copyright infringement, they are just hoping automated services won't recognise the copyright done. Which is also why offbrand products often are a keywords mash to specifically avoid signaling bots.
There is a big difference between not being protected and having trouble getting a court to recognise the problem, but the law will be on the side of LC here
You'd be surprised to learn that most game devs on the platform are older teens and young adults.
So the Supreme court decided a long time ago about the legality of games and copyright, I believe it was over Monopoly.
So you can copyright the written rules of a game, IE you can copyright the printed rule book for monopoly and the exact arrangements of words and paragraphs however, you can not copyright the actual rules of a game. Meaning you can not claim a copyright on rules like rolling dice, kicking a ball, handling a ball, drawing cards, or all of the other common rules that make up a game. This is also why we have open d20 paper game systems that compete with D&D / Wizards of the coast. This is also why and how sports are able to spread and have alternative leagues, like that XFL league some people tried to start or even college and high-school sport leagues.
So, robolox can make a lethal company clone that utilizes the same rules, it's allowed.
Making a game like Lethal Company anywhere else using your own legal assets, or any sandbox tool? Totally fine. The less you try to rip off the exact name/assets and profit, the less the law cares. Parody IS a thing the law acknowledges.
Attempting to make a game using Lethal Company's direct game assets (assuming you don't license them) and then sell it yourself under any name on a distribution platform like Steam? Totally illegal. The worst case scenario would be trying to literally copy and sell the entire game under nearly the same name.
That is what copyright law is about. You don't own concepts in the US, that leads to terrible potential for monopolies in any protected industry. If someone else can do your idea better, that doesn't bode well for you, no. That is generally how it works, ideas are just Scènes à faire unless you directly take something like character design and names, story, direct assets, etc.
You can't copyright the concept of a game (usually it's genre(s), or sub-genre(s)) but you can copyright the execution. Which also applies to board game as, try taking the exact system of DnD and change some words around and see how fast the cease and decist comes in the mail.
Back to Lethal, I told this, and I'll tell it again, you can't copyright the concept of salvage horror, that existed before LC, will exist after, and that's normal. However, blatantly ripping off the branding, as well as the overall execution and setting of the game is subject to copyright infringement, even in the US.
Kyle, what you don't get is that this isn't a LC clone that just does the game but better (not), it's copyright infrigment on both branding, and execution. You can 100% patent a concept also, they all are, it's just that some fall under public use. The concept of plateformer is patented under public use, anyone can make one without infringement. The execution and branding of Mario is however Nintendo property, and that's not something you can do. Off-brand is copyright infrigment and plagiarism
If we go further down the rabbit hole, I'm 100% sure that I've seen the exact same concept in a Doctor Who episode a long time ago. The Doctor was fighting some kind of marble statues of angelic stature and they would attack you unless you were looking at them.
A quick google search and I've found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeping_Angel
It is from 2007.
And I'm pretty sure you could go on further and further the rabbit hole...
Funny how none of those were striken by a copyright law, isn't? It is not like people care either way. Their concept are all exactly the same to the very core but they look so marginally different and are from settings so marginally different that they become their own things and entities and they can't be sued over.
And if you go down far enough you end up with mythology. One thing you would know if you read about it or cared, is that if a concept is old enough, it falls into the public domain. SCP peanut as you said was inspired by Doctor Who's weeping angel and so on so forth. And the reason that they don't get sued over the concept assuming the idea of a thing killing you when you are not looking wasn't public domain could also mean that each entry had enough standing on it's own to exist as a separate entity. Also suing giant corporations is rarely a possibility, not because the law says so, in fact it supports you, but because your opponent is several times larger than you and no lawyer wants to have a go at them.
And the idea that you shouldn't care just because it doesn't affect you is exactly why, at least for video games, the market is saturated with garbage rip-offs that are getting increasingly better at mascarading at good game (and to some extent, bigger studio getting lazy with their work LOOKING AT YOU BETHESDA).
So you are right, not every idea is protected, but it's not the idea of the coil-head, the killer that hunts you when you aren't looking that's patented, it's its execution in the setting, as well as how close it is to LC on a time scale. If at the time doctor WHO aired the weeping angel a ripoff show called doctor WHERE made the crying winged people you would have seen a lawsuit pop up right away.
To sue someone over a concept, you need an owner, and if that owner is dead, or non-existant because it's become part of the public domain (I.e. OG mickey mouse design) then there is no one that would want to sue. Lawsuit are still made by people, not the magic law fairy.