Jagex taking stance

[Pinata]

Link:

 

Hello RuneScapers!

 

 

 

We have some exciting news for all of you! While our history with dealing with cheaters tends to be veiled in secrecy in order to be more efficient, I assure you that we wish to shout out about the actions that have been taken against macro users. Let’s face it: we hate cheating as much as you do, if not more. Just look below at some of these statistics concerning our actions against macro developers.

 

 

 

Key macro stats

 

 

We have a team that work 24/7 against macros both in banning users and breaking the bots.

We spend a huge amount of our tech resource as well on combating the issue.

We ban hundreds of thousands of people each year for macroing, about half of those banned are paying members.

We constantly work on new ways to combat bot makers and users.

We also pursue legal routes wherever specific macros have a significant impact on the RuneScape community. In the last 12 months we’ve successfully used legal action against 3 major macro developers, including completely shutting down 2 macros and seriously damaging another.

We’re also involved in ongoing legal proceedings against other macro developers.

 

 

 

With this in mind, our investigations team is extremely pleased to talk to you about bot busting! If you’re as keen as we are to rid the game of cheaters and rule-breakers, make sure to read on!

 

 

 

 

 

How does bot busting work?

 

 

 

Over the past 3 months Jagex’s Investigations team and Community Management departments have been taking a much more aggressive approach against macro users and have been working closely with the Player Moderator community and bot busting player groups actively removing macro users in-game LIVE. Although removing bots is serious business, that doesn’t mean that we can’t make you all take part in the action.

 

 

 

And this is where we send our kudos to all of you: the idea came originally from the enthusiasm of our fans and we love to say how happy we are with your dedication and passion. A lot of this energy came from our very own players who originally came up with the concept and have been performing the activity in previous years!

 

 

 

Bot busting in 4 steps:

 

 

J-mods get together with players;

At the start of each event we split up the worlds that we’ll be covering and ensure that we’ve got a presence on each one;

Spread to target specific locations and worlds, with a focus on areas where legitimate play is disrupted;

Report the bots and start taking names!

 

 

 

Currently, we have gathered to date tens of thousands of accounts in our Bot Busting sessions so far! Of course, this is only one of the various ways we deal with cheaters and this number remains a fraction as we undertake a large amount of work behind the scenes.

 

 

 

The Community Management and Investigations teams here at Jagex would like to to thank all of our players for their continued support to combat macro users at every step. We wouldn’t be here without you, the players, and are very happy to thank you for it.

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve attached pictures and summaries of our latest bot busts so you can see what we've been up to for yourselves!

 

 

 

 

 

Want to join in on the fun?

 

 

 

Any player is of course very welcome to join the “Botting Awareness movement” by going right Here . This is a player run thread and event that anyone is very welcome to join.

 

 

 

So what are you waiting for? Join the bust and help us to get cracking on some bots!

 

 

 

Remember: “Winners don’t use bots.”

 

 

 

RuneScape Community Management Team

 

Sounds legit if the Jmods are active. This is what RS needs. Just imagine having a Jmod that can perm ban/stat reset/bank swipe, available at your service. If they hired a jmod to do this during the work day, it would definitely make a difference.

[ilovecuttingyews]

We'll have to wait and see how active these bot busting sessions are. As of right now, they're not frequent enough to do any real damage but if they step up the frequency I see this as actually working fairly well.

Overall, this is just them resaying the same stuff they've said since day 1.

[Alg]

We'll have to wait and see how active these bot busting sessions are. As of right now, they're not frequent enough to do any real damage but if they step up the frequency I see this as actually working fairly well.

Overall, this is just them resaying the same stuff they've said since day 1.

And the same sessions they did back in 2007.

[Salad]

inb4haters hate about how Jagex 'actions' against bots are illusions to move the main attention of the problem of bots to something that doesn't do anything

 

Jagex is probably trying, but honestly, they're a company, they want to make money, if the bots pay for membership, they are happy.

[Pinata]

We'll have to wait and see how active these bot busting sessions are. As of right now, they're not frequent enough to do any real damage but if they step up the frequency I see this as actually working fairly well.

Overall, this is just them resaying the same stuff they've said since day 1.

At least they're trying to make it public, tbh before I read this article, I had no clue these bot busting sessions even existed. I just think that if Jagex puts this on the actual home page of rs it could have a HUGE effect.

 

A lot of players would probably enjoy this event, because you know reporting a 133 botter feels pretty damn good. Not to mention if Jagex had this on the front page, it would send a message to botters, that they don't support botting.

 

The only thing missing is Jmod involvement really, I mean you seen bots and how most of the time they're easily identifiable, a Jmod could easily clear bots from sorcerers garden during a work day. However, if Jagex really only cares about cash, then that means they'd lose subscriptions from the bots, and would have to pay someone to ban bots all day.

[Diesel]

We'll have to wait and see how active these bot busting sessions are. As of right now, they're not frequent enough to do any real damage but if they step up the frequency I see this as actually working fairly well.

Overall, this is just them resaying the same stuff they've said since day 1.

And the same sessions they did back in 2007.

 

Basically this.

 

Bot busing sessions have been going on for a long time. Nothing really new about that unless they've amped them up since I've last attended one.

[Stev]

So... Just bot in less common areas?

 

...if Jagex had this on the front page, it would send a message to botters, that they don't support botting...

 

This might stop one or two people here or there. But the problem is not your average-Joe who decides or is tempted to use a bot. It's not players like you or me. It's the RWT/gold farming websites that run thousands at a time. This wouldn't scare them in the slightest.

[Range_This11]

Nice PR move.

[Zaaps1]

Winners don't use bots.

[sees_all1]

Winners don't use bots.

Bot busting = winning with tiger blood.

[champion]

Haha, what the heck happened to Runescape.

[Robert_R]

I still don't believe them.

[Dragonlordjl]

Seems like a desperate PR move to me. They may ban a few thousand bots over the next few weeks to "show" they're serious, but I really doubt they've changed anything

[Alg]

Seems like a desperate PR move to me. They may ban a few thousand bots over the next few weeks to "show" they're serious, but I really doubt they've changed anything

It's the exact thing that they did leading up to their removal of FT/Wild in 2007. It's the opposite of change, except that it's probably intended to impress players that either weren't around back then or never knew that they did it.

 

Bot busts were fun and all, but they never worked. 2007's botters were replaced as soon as they were banned. Now that many botters are actual players instead of gold farmers, it might have a different effect, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Kaida23]

If they had done this a year ago it might of had an effect. Now it's just going to get rid of a bunch of goldfarming bots that will be replaced as soon as they're banned.

[D. V. Devnull]

Tch... If Jagex were serious, then they would have a Clan Channel that happened to have J-mods on-hand 24/7 to handle these in-game, advert-spamming, nausea-causing bots. As it stands, these bots are slowly making me sick just about every time I go on RuneScape now. Heck, I wish Jagex had somewhere I could tell them about the nausea that these bots are causing me, so Jagex could go after the RWT'ers in a court with evidence that the RWT'ers are making Jagex's RuneScape players sick. :-X

 

~D. V. "Can't stand the nausea from the bots..." Devnull

[RSBDavid]

The only thing that would convince me would be a video of JMod's, from their computers, ban-barraging bots. Sure they can say they work behind the scenes and use an advanced bot detection system, but until they use it full scale or give some bts proof instead of PR BS, then I will still just sit here in disbelief. Its the same thing as Barrack Obama stating he is taking care of the immigration problem, but actually provided free money, food, and healthcare to them.

 

[spoiler=Message to Jagex]Dear Jagex, If you read this and care about your game, please rewrite your client in c/c++, this will kill most bots if not all for a couple of months while the bot writers switch to a c/c++ system. Besides, you use a lot of c/c++/assembler in the native libraries and the game would run a lot smoother if it wasn't in the JVM. You could use the applet to invoke the engine or even display graphics, but as far as game control, leave it to c/c++. It wouldn't take much JNI or JAWT usage to convert.Sincerely, A long time RS player who wants his game back.

 

[Stev]

[spoiler=Message to Jagex]Dear Jagex, If you read this and care about your game, please rewrite your client in c/c++, this will kill most bots if not all for a couple of months while the bot writers switch to a c/c++ system. Besides, you use a lot of c/c++/assembler in the native libraries and the game would run a lot smoother if it wasn't in the JVM. You could use the applet to invoke the engine or even display graphics, but as far as game control, leave it to c/c++. It wouldn't take much JNI or JAWT usage to convert.Sincerely, A long time RS player who wants his game back.

This would only make things more difficult for bot writers for, as you said, a month or two... Then what after that?

[highlanders]

They're handing out temp bans, not perm ones. So after the 14 or 21 days are up, the bot is back in business. Great PR, and they're not actually losing any money from bot memberships.

[RSBDavid]

[spoiler=Message to Jagex]Dear Jagex, If you read this and care about your game, please rewrite your client in c/c++, this will kill most bots if not all for a couple of months while the bot writers switch to a c/c++ system. Besides, you use a lot of c/c++/assembler in the native libraries and the game would run a lot smoother if it wasn't in the JVM. You could use the applet to invoke the engine or even display graphics, but as far as game control, leave it to c/c++. It wouldn't take much JNI or JAWT usage to convert.Sincerely, A long time RS player who wants his game back.

This would only make things more difficult for bot writers for, as you said, a month or two... Then what after that?

 

 

Rotating encrypted Item and object ID algorithms reconfigured by the server every 3 hours. This would break bots every 3 hours forcing the owners to update. Seeing that every major update in Runescape takes bots down for 10 hours - 3 days, this would drastically reduce the number of bots.

[Sir_Squab]

When I go to frost dragons and don't see any bots (assuming I could tell) then I'll believe Jagex is taking a firm stance towards bots. I think Jagex is trying to come up with a balance between enough banning and anti-bot PR to try and look good to all the players annoyed at bots, while keeping the punishments light enough and not always banning people in order to keep the bot owners paying for membership.

[Frede173]

I bet each and every of the 'bots' they might find on those sessions still are on the highscores a month after the event(s).

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

Admittedly it doesn't feel like it's doing much. I understand that getting the community involved in this sort of deal will make it feel more real, but this alleged technology should be able to do its job without player help. It's more or less PR.

 

 

The only thing that would convince me would be a video of JMod's, from their computers, ban-barraging bots. Sure they can say they work behind the scenes and use an advanced bot detection system, but until they use it full scale or give some bts proof instead of PR BS, then I will still just sit here in disbelief. Its the same thing as Barrack Obama stating he is taking care of the immigration problem, but actually provided free money, food, and healthcare to them.

 

[spoiler=Message to Jagex]Dear Jagex, If you read this and care about your game, please rewrite your client in c/c++, this will kill most bots if not all for a couple of months while the bot writers switch to a c/c++ system. Besides, you use a lot of c/c++/assembler in the native libraries and the game would run a lot smoother if it wasn't in the JVM. You could use the applet to invoke the engine or even display graphics, but as far as game control, leave it to c/c++. It wouldn't take much JNI or JAWT usage to convert.Sincerely, A long time RS player who wants his game back.

 

 

Hell, while you're at it, why not write the entire freakin' game in J? It's an elegant language and only the truly masochistic would try to script something in that. </sarcasm>

 

No, a platform rewrite wouldn't solve the problem. Technology isn't the problem; culture/style-of-play is. But that's a whole 'nother matter altogether.

[Axe_Volcano]

I say they should incorporate a bunch more random events/ make them more difficult. Seriously, random events nowadays are just short "inconveniences" that any bot can do just as quick if not quicker than players.

[pal2002]

This sounds exactly like something a PR department came up with - no new information, just freaking more propaganda. Jagex is turning into a Communist dicatorship by the day.

 

Or, this is something community management, or in more frank terms, low level employees who get charged with dealing with bots put up themselves. I *might* believe that the few Jmods from community management truly care about banning cheaters, but I don't believe for a second that there is an attitude change at the higher levels. The only way to really solve this problem would be some real tough in-game antibotting measures (new, rotating, harder randoms and banning those who repeatedly fail randoms and log out) and bring back the PERM BAN.

 

I haven't posted on TIF for a while since quitting. But Jagex has made botting punishment even more LENIENT. Botters aren't even getting 14 day bans now, they're getting SEVEN DAY BANS with no wealth or xp reset. And then 14 day. And then 21 day. And then they buy their banned account back. FFS exactly how many chances do these cheaters get?!! I smell a lot of greed.

 

We need to see some real ban waves being in the PR (like Blizzard does) instead of this propaganda crap. "winners don't use bots?" That is just PATHETIC. How about "Botters get PERM BANNED". Much better catchphrase IMO.