JAGEX LIMITED v.IMPULSE SOFTWARE, ERIC SNELLMAN, and MARK SNELLMAN

[Ambler]

Im amazed how much attention this thread has gotten. :blink:

Just goes to show that Jagex have been trying, even though sme evil side of me thinks this whole free trade thing was a set up, a plan to earn Jagex milions. Random thoughts are random

[@Dan3HitU]

You also have to consider precedent. Now that a case has been successfully won in favour of Jagex, you have to assume it would be easier to reference said case in future legal disputes.

I simply thought they'd do what they did in the past; do a huge bot-banning then simply forget about it and in words; not have the balls to file lawsuits.

 

Thankfully, this time Jagex are seeing the entire thing out (or so it seems). I hope it continues.

[Blutters]

Makes me wonder what would've happened if the botmakers had stopped of their own accord and just disappeared, so to speak. But obviously there was no way they could have known their golden goose would end up losing them EVERYTHING.

It was a gamble on their part from the start and you never quit while you're ahead.

So, from the looks of this, the botmakers really did end up with nothing? Like, they've lost all profit and then some? Wow...

[Sy_Accursed]

You also have to consider precedent. Now that a case has been successfully won in favour of Jagex, you have to assume it would be easier to reference said case in future legal disputes.

I simply thought they'd do what they did in the past; do a huge bot-banning then simply forget about it and in words; not have the balls to file lawsuits.

 

Thankfully, this time Jagex are seeing the entire thing out (or so it seems). I hope it continues.

 

But they've been filing lawsuits and winning smaller cases for many years; their filling a case and seeing it through with more than "just words" is nothing new. They been doing it since like 07/08 atleast. This ones just a bigger deal as it was one of the main bot dev who had it setup more as an actual proper business AND Jagex actually won on all counts for a massive settlement; not just minor victories (eg they've been awarded control of the domain before but nothing in the court order to stop the defendants making a new domain)

 

Makes me wonder what would've happened if the botmakers had stopped of their own accord and just disappeared, so to speak. But obviously there was no way they could have known their golden goose would end up losing them EVERYTHING.

It was a gamble on their part from the start and you never quit while you're ahead.

So, from the looks of this, the botmakers really did end up with nothing? Like, they've lost all profit and then some? Wow...

 

"you never a quit while you're ahead"

The popular saying: "Always quit while you're ahead" comes to mind

[pal2002]

Finally, years later the law catches up with the Snellman brothers. I don't think the judgement is final, but it looks like this is not going to any more courts. If anything, justice have been delayed far too long by nothing other than (our shitty) legal process. I can't help but to feel that it has come far too late.

 

I honestly don't believe the 'repentance' from these two Florida brothers who have profitted off runescape cheating for so many years. It's probably just part of their plea bargain. However much they're paying Jagex, it will probably be less than how much they've made doing this, or how much direct membership $ jagex lost due to people botting to billions and 99's in a matter of a few months.

 

And as I've said before, the billions of gold and the millions of 99's farmed by cheaters really have changed RS forever. No MMO out there have ever faced the epidemic proportion of cheaters as RS have (at its peak....~60% of all online players were cheaters) and you can be sure that this was not seen favorably by anyone, especially Jagex's own players. I can login now (still face a few bots..) but can only seen a tainted and dying game. Perhaps this is why RS's own founders have all abandoned it.

 

But it feels good to finally be able to put this case to rest and say this: eat shit Snellman's! This is long overdue.

[Bauke]

Very good to read this. Especially because the developers have to give customer details to Jagex. I hope for many many bans.

 

Jagex already said as long as they don't keep botting they'll be fine. One time amnesty

I dislike Jagex' lenient stance on botting, but it will at least be a plus to have the records.

[Kimberly]

I can login now (still face a few bots..) but can only seen a tainted and dying game.

 

Dying? Perhaps, that would be natural for how long rs has been running. But the economy has recovered quite nicely post-botnuke. I don't see much of a 'taint' left by them.

[UltraMantis]

I can login now (still face a few bots..) but can only seen a tainted and dying game.

 

Dying? Perhaps, that would be natural for how long rs has been running. But the economy has recovered quite nicely post-botnuke. I don't see much of a 'taint' left by them.

There are 150,000 less people on at any given time

[Kimberly]

I can login now (still face a few bots..) but can only seen a tainted and dying game.

 

Dying? Perhaps, that would be natural for how long rs has been running. But the economy has recovered quite nicely post-botnuke. I don't see much of a 'taint' left by them.

There are 150,000 less people on at any given time

 

Which is why I agreed that the game might be dying. But tainted? No. It only masked the natural trend.

[brunokiller]

> implying the game is dying because there are no longer dozens of f2p worlds filled with bots.

[Jonanananas]

I can login now (still face a few bots..) but can only seen a tainted and dying game.

 

Dying? Perhaps, that would be natural for how long rs has been running. But the economy has recovered quite nicely post-botnuke. I don't see much of a 'taint' left by them.

There are 150,000 less people on at any given time

 

No, there's still roughly the same amount of *people* playing, maybe a bit less, it's the computers that stopped playing runescape. Sure, runescape will die at some point, because it is old and there's simply a natural lifespan in almost all internet entertainment stuff, especially MMOs. But honestly, Runescape itself isn't doing bad. They've got rid of one of its, if not the major problem, they're still putting out content at an amazing rate with a high quality to it, no matter what some naysayers think. What they manage to pull of through Java and browser on a technical level is simply incredible. Heck, even communication, another of Jagex's bigger problems has improved(well, a bit at least). Sure, Runescape will eventually die, but it still has some years despite already being one of the oldest MMOs. You may see it as tainted, but why? I'm pretty sure it's not because the game has changed, it's because you changed. You grew out of it. No big deal, a lot of people do that. I probably will too, at this point. But can you really put forward real facts why this game is tainted? I would be interested to hear them.

[Fire_God]

If anything, things like this just imply that the game is getting healthier. With many of the bots gone, there are fewer obstacles to new F2P players. Hopefully this lawsuit will help new players come into the game and revitalize it.

[Lord Paul]

Good job jagex!

 

Now just post this on the main page. :pray:

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

Very good to read this. Especially because the developers have to give customer details to Jagex. I hope for many many bans.

 

Jagex already said as long as they don't keep botting they'll be fine. One time amnesty

 

It's something like this that both runs counter to Jagex's alleged "hard-line" stance on rulebreaking, and undermines this successful effort. It's fantastic that they won this case (in some respects), but they're letting the rule breakers get away with a very harsh warning. I'm not so sure I agree with that.

[Kaida23]

Very good to read this. Especially because the developers have to give customer details to Jagex. I hope for many many bans.

Jagex already said as long as they don't keep botting they'll be fine. One time amnesty

It's something like this that both runs counter to Jagex's alleged "hard-line" stance on rulebreaking, and undermines this successful effort. It's fantastic that they won this case (in some respects), but they're letting the rule breakers get away with a very harsh warning. I'm not so sure I agree with that.

Perhaps they realized that the loss of revenue from the gold farming bots would be bad enough without getting rid of all the subscribers who also botted.

[Sylpheed]

Even when Runescape no longer becomes profitable from regular content updates there's no way in hell they will just shut the game down. Simply charging membership for existing member content the game would still be massively profitable. The only thing they would be paying would be server costs. MMO's quite often use this model when they reach the end of their lifecycle.

 

Until that happens I won't be considering it a dying game. That's not naïveté, it's common sense.

[Ginger_Warrior]

Depends on your definition of dying I suppose. To me, "dying" means the subject is heading towards an inevitable end. Death is terminal. That is, a process which cannot be reversed.

 

I'd address the issue of who that regular content is going to, Sylpheed. Because when you look at the content released over the past twelve months, you really have to question whether it's aimed at attracting new customers, or keeping the ones who are already playing. Any business which fails to do a good enough job at attracting new customers is a dying one, in most people's eyes, and the recent trend in membership numbers speaks for itself.

[Sy_Accursed]

Depends on your definition of dying I suppose. To me, "dying" means the subject is heading towards an inevitable end. Death is terminal. That is, a process which cannot be reversed.

 

If you take that as you definition everything is "dying" from the exact moment of its creation as it has a finite lifespan and an inevitable end that it has begun moving towards; which in turn makes it a meaningless term to apply as it is just assumed everything is "dying" and being in a state of dying is not a negative and simply a norm.

[Ginger_Warrior]

I suppose theoretically, all things which have a finite life are dying, yes. You know full well I was referring to persistent decline though. Seems pretty daft to declare that a healthy, growing toddler is dying. RuneScape is anything but a healthy, growing toddler, however.

 

This is a subject for another thread. To summerise this one: Jagex beat the bots. Yay. </thread>?

[Sylpheed]

Depends on your definition of dying I suppose. To me, "dying" means the subject is heading towards an inevitable end. Death is terminal. That is, a process which cannot be reversed.

 

I'd address the issue of who that regular content is going to, Sylpheed. Because when you look at the content released over the past twelve months, you really have to question whether it's aimed at attracting new customers, or keeping the ones who are already playing. Any business which fails to do a good enough job at attracting new customers is a dying one, in most people's eyes, and the recent trend in membership numbers speaks for itself.

 

Before I derail the thread anymore I'll just reply to this.

 

Yes, Jagex's content focus has shifted towards keeping it's already paying members. I hate to keep comparing Runescape to other MMO's but it holds water. The older MMO's get the more the companys that own them try to keep players.

 

It's inevitable that the balance between low and high level players will shift to the high level area. The longer a game lasts the more high level players there will be. I don't necessarily see it as a sign of death. I see it as a natural part of the games lifecycle.

 

The simple fact is, Jagex is still making profit from Runescape, until member numbers steadily begin to decline and Jagex continually loses money from running and updating the game, it isn't dying.

[Albel]

Speechless.

Same here, can't actually believe this has happened.

[pulli23]

Well the best measure of how "alive" a certain game (or online webpage) is is by looking at how many NEW people come to said game. New people are always needed to keep a game alive and lack of new people coming to a game is often an early indication of a game losing it's popularity.

 

If I look around me, my friends obviously are less into runescape than 8 years ago. However if I look at my youngest brother (7 years younger than me) even between his friends runescape doesn't have the popularity I remember. So I'm wondering, what kind of reduction is player base we're actually experiencing the last few years?

[Den]

I like how all the info they had stored on customers/developers and their code was given to Jagex. Anyone who used that bot must be worried if they tied any lines between it and their rs account.

[Randox]

It's kind of scary to realize just how much money these companies must have been making if the injunction looks like that (the 1 million part). I suspect the settlement itself was several times that. More than enough to pay the legal fees, and probably enough to help fund further efforts in this area.

 

I also like the part about turning over all their records. That should have the botters sweating, especially the ones who used this bot. I wouldn't be opposed to it being used as a strait up perm ban list, though that might be counterproductive to profits unfortunately.

 

What it will do is give a list of players to check over again, and might also work as evidence in other law suits they may take on.

[Gandorf61]

I can login now (still face a few bots..) but can only seen a tainted and dying game. Perhaps this is why RS's own founders have all abandoned it.

 

I'd address the issue of who that regular content is going to, Sylpheed. Because when you look at the content released over the past twelve months, you really have to question whether it's aimed at attracting new customers, or keeping the ones who are already playing. Any business which fails to do a good enough job at attracting new customers is a dying one, in most people's eyes, and the recent trend in membership numbers speaks for itself.

 

I'd like to invite you both to look at the number of current members since the beginning of this year here. With the exception of a the weekly drops (players banned most likely) the curves are upward sloping. Sure they are nowhere near the 1M+ members they had a few years ago but that's the effect bots have had on the game. If the current trend continues the member count could very well reach 1M by the end of 2012.

 

Runescape was a dieing game because of the bots, but now that Jagex has won this case, nuked bots, and have made so much progress I don't see it spiralling to a dismal end anytime soon.