Old School RuneScape, the MMORPG by Jagex, is one of the most popular MMOs out there, and it has been like that ever since its release back in 2013, with millions of players playing the game every day. But the player’s experience has been hindered lately by a swamp of bots with the developer saying that the bots are fine if the bot owners are paying.
Some changes were also recently made to the game’s PvP-oriented Wilderness zone to benefit bots, which was seen as an attempt to increase player numbers in the game, but the developer has now backtracked and has brought new changes and updates on how it plans to tackle the issue of bots in Old School RuneScape.
Old School RuneScape Provides Update on Its Strategy to Combat Bots
Developer Jagex released a blog post and provided an update on how it plans to tackle the bots in Old School RuneScape as it has become an “increasingly prevalent conversation” and also revealed the improvements it’s making to tackle OSRS bots.
Jagex said that it is improving its anti-cheating capabilities and removal of the bots with its dedicated anti-cheating team and game technology team, as well as with data science and legal takedowns. It revealed the strategy of banning bots, which consists of an anti-cheat specialist team that keeps track of cheaters and stops them.
A combination of bespoke tools, data analytics models, and internal investigations are also done to detect and remove cheaters from the game. The developer said that it is also using legal methods to remove cheating sites that make bots, sell gold, and unauthorized sites that sell game accounts.
Jagex also shared the ban stats and said that it has banned more than 6.9 million accounts in 2023 and has been banning over 67,000 Old School RuneScape accounts every week, with over 2,800 accounts for botting boss-related content. It also said that it removes around 1.5T GP from the RuneScape economy and around 900B GP from the Old School RuneScape economy every week.
The HiScores Issue Is Also Being Taken Care Of
The developer shared that it is aware of the HiScores issue related to the banned accounts in the game, adding that some current systems are “not up to the level we require” and what players deserve, but it is making no exceptions. For those unaware, HiScores is a feature that ranks players by their experience in skills, scores in Bounty Hunter and Last Man Standing, and kill counts.
It added that accounts that are getting banned are not removed from HiScores rankings, and the anti-cheating team is working on it with the game engine team so that it can remove the accounts from HiScores for actual players to get their deserved spots on it.
It added that this applies to all the content, including the Corrupted Gauntlet and both teams working on this will investigate this and manually remove the banned accounts from the HiScores, and they should not appear soon.
What are your thoughts about Jagex’s new strategy against bots? Let us know in the comments.
