“Bots are basically okay” - New Jagex management

Hi all, I just wanted to give some reassurance regarding the quote from the article mentioned in this post.

We know bots exist, just as much as you do when you see them in-game, but it’s important to highlight that the article does not accurately reflect our strategy. Our priority is to always ensure every player has a good experience when playing both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape.

Since the news of the acquisition came about, many of you have been saying we’re not banning bots on purpose, mostly pointing to how we’re padding out player numbers. That just isn’t true and would not be good for the game. We are banning bots, more than we ever have before. But the reality is, and this is something we’ve said time and time again, it’s an arms race. As fast as we ban them, new bots are made. We’re constantly working to keep ahead of this race, and we ARE working on bigger initiatives to tackle botting as a whole, although we aren’t ready discuss the details of this just yet.

To give some context in the form of data, here are some ban stats:

• Last year we banned over 6.9 million accounts.
• So far in 2024, each week on average, we ban over 2,300 RuneScape accounts.
• So far in 2024, each week on average, we ban over 67,000 Old School RuneScape accounts.
  • Of these accounts, 2,800 are for botting popular boss-related content.
• Each week, around 1.5T GP is removed from the RuneScape economy.
• Each week, around 900B GP is removed from the Old School RuneScape economy.

We do hope to have further information in the coming days to cover some areas around botting, and how we’re handling bans, but it won’t go into the detail of the longer-term improvements. That will come later in the year, as we continue to develop our tech and tools. I also know this is something we’ve said in the past too, but it is happening, and I ask that you be patient as we work towards much bigger improvements than we’ve seen before.

Also, I’d like to point out that whilst it’s commonplace for people to have more than one account, I recently looked over the results of the annual survey and I can safely say based on that data alone, it’s not at the scale that has been quoted. Most respondents state they play on one account, with some of them having 2 accounts. It’s not that common for players to have more than 1-2 accounts total. Our internal data tracking systems say pretty much the same thing too.

I hope this provides some much-needed clarity for now, and I’ll end this by saying the following... Having Membership on multiple accounts does not factor into our decision making for applying bans. Ever.

The other post mentioned in my reply will hopefully cover some of this for you and the many others wondering. Until then I can't share anything else, sorry!

Apologies for being super lazy, but I think Goblin has already said about as much as we're able to say on this topic generally, so sharing it again here in case you missed that:

ACT are working on trying to find a consistent and enforceable way to remove these players from the HiScores so that real players are actually able to secure spots - note that this applies to all content in the game, including things like CG. The ACT and Game Engine teams are investigating manual removal from the HiScores for accounts that have already been banned, should be banned or for any other reason should not still be appearing on the HiScores. Note that there are some players who are permanently banned but still appearing on the HiScores who are included in this manual removal.

The post for full context

And to add to that, a lot of these accounts are played by real people rather than botted. I do not doubt that some of them are involved in illicit activity, but what is posted above covers that point as much as I'm able to.

Hey all. We've been wanting to provide some reassurance on this quote and have been discussing across both teams this morning.

Ayiza just responded with an answer that's totally reflective of our perspective on the RuneScape side too, so I wanted to copy it to this thread on our subreddit.

"We know bots exist, just as much as you do when you see them in-game, but it’s important to highlight that the article does not accurately reflect our strategy. Our priority is to always ensure every player has a good experience when playing both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape.

Since the news of the acquisition came about, many of you have been saying we’re not banning bots on purpose, mostly pointing to how we’re padding out player numbers. That just isn’t true and would not be good for the game. We are banning bots, more than we ever have before. But the reality is, and this is something we’ve said time and time again, it’s an arms race. As fast as we ban them, new bots are made. We’re constantly working to keep ahead of this race, and we ARE working on bigger initiatives to tackle botting as a whole, although we aren’t ready discuss the details of this just yet.

To give some context in the form of data, here are some ban stats:

• Last year we banned over 6.9 million accounts.
• So far in 2024, each week on average, we ban over 2,300 RuneScape accounts.
• So far in 2024, each week on average, we ban over 67,000 Old School RuneScape accounts.
• Of these accounts, 2,800 are for botting popular boss-related content.
• Each week, around 1.5T GP is removed from the RuneScape economy.
• Each week, around 900B GP is removed from the Old School RuneScape economy.

We do hope to have further information in the coming days to cover some areas around botting, and how we’re handling bans, but it won’t go into the detail of the longer-term improvements. That will come later in the year, as we continue to develop our tech and tools. I also know this is something we’ve said in the past too, but it is happening, and I ask that you be patient as we work towards much bigger improvements than we’ve seen before.

Also, I’d like to point out that whilst it’s commonplace for people to have more than one account, I recently looked over the results of the annual survey and I can safely say based on that data alone, it’s not at the scale that has been quoted. Most respondents state they play on one account, with some of them having 2 accounts. It’s not that common for players to have more than 1-2 accounts total. Our internal data tracking systems say pretty much the same thing too.

I hope this provides some much-needed clarity for now, and I’ll end this by saying the following... Having Membership on multiple accounts does not factor into our decision making for applying bans. Ever."

Two for two:
https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/1aunlry/comment/kr587pf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3