Runescape Bots

[Wessan]

Well, I got bored and decided I wanted to investigate a little bit into RS botting. I used some stuff to protect my internet and computer while searching sites that offer RS bots (yep, I am scared of something downloading itself by me being there).

 

Anyway, what I found out is how quick and easy it is for anyone playing RS to get a bot program. Now, obviously we all know it must be considering how many bots we suspect are on RS at a time. Of the sites I found, one actually had a tracker of all the accounts using their bot at any given time. The total was about 1500. But I digress.

 

My question is with the ease of access and the blatant "Here I am! Download me!" attitude of botting sites, how is it they are up and running, some now for several years? I believe Jagex does what it can, but if they know people are using a bot, Im sure they could link it back to these sites and get them shut down, or at least buy out domain names to keep sites from being name related to Runescape.

 

I assume also that Jagex has a minimum level of bots they accept within the game considering we all know they are there and cannot possibly expel them all, but they could at least get the ones I looked at. A simple Google search gave me pages upon pages of actually relevant information about bots and how to get them.

 

Does Jagex need a bigger legal team? Or is it that it really just takes that much time to deal with the legal process.

 

I remember once that Jagex put up news they had shut down many sites and threw down the ban hammer on 100s, maybe 1000s, of players for using them, but that was several years ago. So, what is taking so long?

 

BTW, I do not condone, endorse, or use bots.

[The Dark Lord]

I don't see how these botting sites are even "illegal," allowing Jagex to "shut them down" in the first place.

 

They're just creating scripts to work in botting clients that just so happen to be designed to function in RuneScape. How does that violate any laws?

[brunokiller]

They usually use the 'copyright' method to shut them down. :unsure:

[Bladewing]

we all know how well that worked for the likes of piratebay and wikileaks, lol.

 

the website owners, depending on where the website is hosted, can basically tell jagex to [bleep] off and that will be the end of it as long as they can deal with jagex's paper storm

[Healerdude2]

I have a friend uses a bot program and it annoys the crap out of me since hes making like 1 mil a hour and not even doing anything. And i think its crap that people say prove there botting i mean come on 15 guys all with the same name except 1 letter is kinda like yelling"THESE ARE BOTS!!!". Im guessing that there just to lazy to ban them or that bots are half of the runescape players and they dont wanna lose that much cash income. They could at least ban the free playing bots.

[Sy_Accursed]

It does take a while to shut these types of sites down cause its quite an odd angle you have to come in at.

Plus theres the whole issue of internationality in bring a lawsuit.

 

However there is a growing legal precedent that any site that seeks to alter or modify a gaming experience or take money for services related to the game where these are prohibited by the game rules is falling into a strong area of digital property theft and copyright infringement. Eg one set of us court papers I saw for a jagex vs bot site case that they won was won based on the fact the court deemed the creation of the bot to modify the gaming experience a infringment of jagex's copyright; the use of the runescape brand and associations that link to it such as rune in advertising the bot as liable and charging for a premium version of the bot as digital theft/fraud as all money generated by runescape and for the playing of runescape should be jagexs.

[Sephy_]

I don't see how these botting sites are even "illegal," allowing Jagex to "shut them down" in the first place.

 

They're just creating scripts to work in botting clients that just so happen to be designed to function in RuneScape. How does that violate any laws?

Didn't JaGeX get one site to "shut down" (read: change it's name) by suing them for using their trademark (Runescape)

[Healerdude2]

Its not just the sites they should go after its the users. They are the reason these site exsist and stay operating.

[dyze]

Where there is potential for a black market, or underground niche such as this, it will ALWAYS exist. Jagex can fight it, but it's a lot of effort. The bot problem will never be eliminated. It's very easy to get hold of Bot Clients, and scripts. Blatent botters are banned, all the time. But the majoity of the botting population use moderation, which makes it very hard to detect.

[The Runar]

I have a friend uses a bot program and it annoys the crap out of me since hes making like 1 mil a hour and not even doing anything.

 

1) When he bots find his character

2) Lure

3) ???

4) Profit!

[Hajutze]

Not to mention that if you have free time you can learn to make bots for like ... 1 week or so (personal experience ... runescape bots are fairly easy to script)

[foursideking]

I actually read up on an experiment they did at one of those techy universities. As a culminating task, they gave each student the name of a big mmo/online game, and each student had a month to come up with a botting/hacking program for said game. I don't have the link to the article, but apparently the winner was a guy who developed an 'infinite spawn' hack for red alert 3.

[Healerdude2]

I have a friend uses a bot program and it annoys the crap out of me since hes making like 1 mil a hour and not even doing anything.

 

1) When he bots find his character

2) Lure

3) ???

4) Profit!

to many other bots running with him lol. they all walk exactly the same path.

[dyze]

 

1) When he bots find his character

2) Lure

3) ???

4) Profit!

 

+1 :twss:

 

 

I actually read up on an experiment they did at one of those techy universities. As a culminating task, they gave each student the name of a big mmo/online game, and each student had a month to come up with a botting/hacking program for said game. I don't have the link to the article, but apparently the winner was a guy who developed an 'infinite spawn' hack for red alert 3.

 

I've heard of similar. Old friend of mine created a Counter Strike Source wallhack and aimbot for a Computer Programming module, and received a 1st. Crazy!

[foursideking]

Well, I found the article, mind you it was a newspaper one and I don't have a scanner, so...anyways, there was another interesting one I saw for red alert 3, where a guy spawned infinite infantry, and won all but 5 of his 1000games using them...pretty weird eh?

[eric6669]

If I ever start playing again, I will bot. No way in hell I am going to spend countless hours just clicking crap to get levels.

[The Dark Lord]

It does take a while to shut these types of sites down cause its quite an odd angle you have to come in at.

Plus theres the whole issue of internationality in bring a lawsuit.

 

However there is a growing legal precedent that any site that seeks to alter or modify a gaming experience or take money for services related to the game where these are prohibited by the game rules is falling into a strong area of digital property theft and copyright infringement. Eg one set of us court papers I saw for a jagex vs bot site case that they won was won based on the fact the court deemed the creation of the bot to modify the gaming experience a infringment of jagex's copyright; the use of the runescape brand and associations that link to it such as rune in advertising the bot as liable and charging for a premium version of the bot as digital theft/fraud as all money generated by runescape and for the playing of runescape should be jagexs.

 

That's still a rather ridiculous argument to use in order to shut these sites down.

[Wessan]

How is it ridiculous? If Jagex has a trademark or copyright on a logo or script, and you are using the logo or modifying the script without having their permission, Id say that is a pretty straightforward case.

[Fairness]

Well, I found the article, mind you it was a newspaper one and I don't have a scanner, so...anyways, there was another interesting one I saw for red alert 3, where a guy spawned infinite infantry, and won all but 5 of his 1000games using them...pretty weird eh?

 

He managed to lose 5 games with infinite infantry? That must be the worst player ever.

[Mercifull]

Well, I found the article, mind you it was a newspaper one and I don't have a scanner, so...anyways, there was another interesting one I saw for red alert 3, where a guy spawned infinite infantry, and won all but 5 of his 1000games using them...pretty weird eh?

 

He managed to lose 5 games with infinite infantry? That must be the worst player ever.

What if his opponent had infinite Grinders :P

[dyze]

ANYWAY back on topic.

 

Go to any world at Red Chins, FULL of bots.. it's a joke

[WolfieMario]

How is it ridiculous? If Jagex has a trademark or copyright on a logo or script, and you are using the logo or modifying the script without having their permission, Id say that is a pretty straightforward case.

For the company/game names/logos, yes, there are trademarks. Actually, if we stick to strict laws, copyright statutes make all forms of RS machinima (besides those explicitly requested by Jagex to videomakers such as Tehnoobshow) illegal, as well as any form of RS-inspired artwork. But thankfully Jagex isn't stupid totalitarian and sees the value in fan-generated works. But just saying, the same way they shut botting sites down could just as easily (if not more easily) be used to stop any form of artistic expression based on RS, and, while that's obviously not something they would ever do, it's still a dangerous precedent to allow. Other companies are actually famous for using copyright to gain full control over any representation of their game and prevent unofficial artists from doing anything they want.

 

But I digress, since we weren't talking about video or graphics/art, we were talking about programming. Oh, wait, as it turns out, the bot-makers don't have to touch Jagex's script in any way/shape/form. There are some bot-makers that do, by creating modified clients, but this actually is a real violation of copyright law (both in legal terms and in the spirit of the law). But they have little difficulty shutting down sites with bots that use modified clients, because, apart from actual copyright violation, they also are in violation of the game's Terms of Service (the same thing you run foul of if you download an RS model cache viewer or try ripping music/sprites from the cache). So modified clients, to the best of my knowledge, tend to only be on private bots, not the well-distributed ones.

 

The vast majority of bots, however, don't have to touch Jagex's code at all and can be made without doing anything to the client. Basically, picture a program that analyzes what's on the screen, tries to interpret it, and has a pre-defined list of actions to control a mouse cursor based on what it interprets. None of these things violate copyright, and are in no way exclusive to anything Jagex has done. Think of how many other games require you to use a mouse, and to look at the screen and understand what you see... On second thought, try thinking of a few that don't. If something is so basic and fundamental, and was already used by many people before you came into the picture, you can't claim copyright or patent over it.

 

The fact is, making an RS bot isn't illegal under the spirit and intention of copyright law, and what Jagex is doing is yet another misappropriation of an already overextended law (people have already used copyright laws as a means of legal censorship, as a means of regulating who gets to view what exactly the way you want them to, as a means of eliminating all possible competition in your field, and as a means of eliminating entire fields of education... I've written a 14 page research paper on this stuff, so hopefully you can gather that I know a thing or two about copyright law...). This is ridiculous, and not because I think Jagex shouldn't be able to stop the botting companies (believe me, I think they should be able to; I hate bots and the lazy people who use them to illegitimately gain stats and cash without effort...). This is ridiculous because what their legal actions imply: modifying a gaming experience is now considered copyright violation. Honestly, stop and think about that for a moment: modifying someone's gaming experience. My friends modify my gaming experience by making it better. People modify each others' monster hunting experience by fighting together. Machinima and screenshot faking modified my gaming experience by preventing me from wanting to quit even at times when I tired of actual gameplay. Guides and tutorials modify my gaming experience by making things less confusing and giving me ideas of things to do. Websites that create stats signatures modify our experience by letting us show off and driving that general "I must have the best stats" feeling some players have. Swiftkit modifies some peoples' gaming experience. Hell, if I choose to play with two monitors (the game split in half across them), that modifies my gaming experience (and fun fact, there are companies which tell us "no, you can't play that on that system" or "no, you can't watch that on that display", or "no, we want you to experience our content exactly like this, and you have no other options.").

 

The fact is, this broad precedent that "modifying someone's experience" should be considered copyright violation is beyond ridiculous. I know, Jagex should do what they can to get rid of the bots and their sites, but I don't like that they contribute to this increasing notion that "copyright violation" is an entirely valid claim to declare anything in the digital world illegal. Pretty soon you'll see companies saying it's copyright violation to minimize their fullscreen game with WindowsKey+D instead of logging out since the game hides your taskbar and has no minimize button, and they only want you to play the game and do nothing else at the same time. For crying out loud, people have tried using copyright violation threats to people who use URL manipulation to find an image file that wasn't meant to be released yet, all because a company's programmers are too lazy to block user access to those files. If typing an address in your URL bar is considered copyright violation by some companies, you can imagine just how dangerously they could throw around "you're modifying someone's gaming experience" <_<

 

 

Also, I'd like to reference something I mentioned earlier - "we weren't talking about video or graphics/art, we were talking about programming". I actually meant that statement with a sarcastic undertone, since it seems so few people consider programming an art. Sure, you don't have to be a musician to say that music is an art. You don't need to be a painter to agree a painting is art. You don't have to be a filmmaker to classify movies as art. But it seems so few people who are not programmers ever consider programming an art... "Oh, you're just telling a machine what to do." And a painter is just telling their colors to form shapes that imitate the idea in their mind. A musician is just telling notes and sounds to evoke emotions. A member of a band is simply telling their instrument what sounds to make, eh? I fail to see why programming is seldom considered an art form in and of itself (think about most reviews of Jagex's content in updates; some people will like the graphics, and many tend to enjoy the recent music. But about the programming, all most people do is criticize it when there's bugs, and otherwise fail to acknowledge it at all).

People enjoy visual art and music without understanding how to make it, but the same fails to be true for programming. You don't have to see the layers in a graphics artist's photoshop file to enjoy the result, and you don't need to analyze sheet music to enjoy what passes through your ears. So I don't think that works of programming should be considered enjoyable only after rigorous examination of the source code (something that non-programmers wouldn't bother to do)...

 

Anyways, I'll stop myself there, but I'm trying to make the point that programming is also an art. It seems everybody on mainstream RS forums is afraid of private servers and thinks of hackers and rule-breakers when trying to picture the people who make them. When really, it's usually just hobbyists doing things similar to the people who make RS-inspired artwork or videos, but in the interactive field. Honestly, if it weren't considered a ToS violation and copyright violation <_<, I would like to try making a private server and see how difficult the very basics of making a game like RS is, and also to have a little fun. I'd like to be able to make my own quest or a very simple mini-game. Hell, I even have a detailed idea for an interactive screenshot fake I want to make (of a new random event where you have to make several decisions, and the order you make them in effects your overall outcome). However, something tells me even though I'd be making it in 2D and not going any further than the event itself, someone would still dub it a private server. Now, I don't think macroing is a good thing, but even I'm interested in the idea of how far you could take the concept of making an AI to play a game. I mean, I remember a game I once played that let you go into options and swap a player (or even all players!) out for computer-controlled AIs, and control how well the AI did (ranging from crappy, to far better than a human could ever hope to play the game). So I can see how the idea of making an AI to play a game would be interesting - I actually have a friend who made a bot once just for the hell of it. He didn't use it to train any real account, and only bothered on a throwaway account to see how easily he'd be caught. Yes, the bot was banned, but he didn't want to cheat with it anyhow.

 

I'm against botting because it has no actual effort behind it, and think macroers ruin the game. I also don't think that a bot script, or any script written for a game, should be sold or otherwise used to milk profit off a game, and do consider that theft because you earning money wouldn't be possible without that game and its players. Effectively, I consider sites that sell bots, and sites that use bots for rwt, to be stealing from Jagex and the community. An RS machinima maker doesn't get paid, a screenshot faker doesn't get paid, someone who makes RS digipaints or sculptures or papercrafts or whatever doesn't get paid, etc., so I don't think people should earn money in any way off making a macro script. That I consider theft. But I don't consider it wrong to actually make the script as an experiment, and don't think the macro-makers who make free scripts are at fault in any way besides the fact that they distribute their script. That's something I disagree with - distributing the script with the intention of players using it to cheat. But at the same time, I don't consider it an issue to distribute a script so other programmers can analyze it, as long as the intention isn't for people to use it to cheat. I know it's a sort of odd philosophy, since the internet allows anyone to see whatever you put on it, and you can't control what people do with it. But if we say "if it can be used for evil, it is evil", we get back to a dangerous way of thinking. I mean, someone can take part of one of my recent screenshot fakes (where a divine was bought at 1 gp) and try passing it off as a real screenshot. Or more broadly, someone could use my RS fonts to make their own scam screenshot fakes. Likewise, someone could quote an Onion article in a serious context, and not mention that the Onion is a parody news company. Or someone could use the Print Screen button to get a copy of an image that your browser stops you from right-clicking. Or someone could use their digipainting skills to make a concept art of a non-existant item, such as Chaotic Claws, and claim it's official in an attempt to get dclaws to drop in value. Or really, someone can use anything to do anything. Does that mean that we should make anything against the rules because there is a conceivable evil use for it? I'm a libertarian, so my answer to that is no. I don't think it's right when copyright law is used to prevent a research team from publishing their findings in the field of computer security (and scientific advancement relies on publication of research!), and I think it's no different to blindly say that distributing any code for a private server or macro should be illegal in the same vein. I think it should be illegal to earn money off it, and I think it should be against the rules to use such scripts to cheat. But I don't think writing them or showing them to people should be a violation. I know it's hard for Jagex to stop these cheaters, but a copyright claim is far from the right direction...

 

/essay

[Healerdude2]

ouch my brain hurts from reading all that

[Wessan]

@WolfieMario:

 

I agree with your overall message and happy that you explained it all. I posted my comment to get an explanation of your previous post... well, ya gave one.

 

Also, what happened to the other bot thread about the lvl 130+ guy?

[BeNiceOk]

I know it's hard for Jagex to stop these cheaters, but a copyright claim is far from the right direction...

 

I know you bought up some good points, and understand the situation, however I believe Jagex really has no other options (that don't directly hurt themselves) which is why they choose to use the law as they do.

 

If I were a company leader and I was put between the decision of removing a company via a shady loophole or attempting to remove my profits directly by modifying my game, I would choose the less direct option. Perhaps you would choose a different choice, however as long as the option exists people will take advantage of it. It's just like botting in the game. If people all around you can bot, you start to think about what it would be like if you did it too.

 

We know that Jagex tried the direct option when they removed the wilderness. It worked for a short while, but the problem eventually worked back into the game. At that point they were removed of options since they can no longer fight bots directly. Lets face it, bots are so advanced now and advance at such a fast rate, removing them is simply not logical anymore.

 

The only way they can fight the bots now is to remove any connection with the game to kill them at the root when they are created. As a quote once said "When two AI are pitted against each-other, the AI with superior hardware [and software] will always win." If Jagex attempts to find bots and remove them directly they will always be one step behind. This law, however unethical it may be, is really the only option Jagex has. Can it be misused? Maybe. But as long as the government allows the law to exist, there is no reason they shouldn't or wont take advantage of it.