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

[Alg]

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.

It probably depends on what Jagex does over the course of the year. They have a lot more competition (For both free MMO and inexpensive multiplayer games) than they did a few years ago, but the game isn't going to die unless Jagex makes a string of impossibly bad moves or something.

[Lord Paul]

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.

 

 

I'm guessing there is a formula that is searching the hiscores for the lowest ranked total level... pretty nifty idea (I've just started importing GE data for a calculator, so this interests me).

Assuming that I'm looking at this correctly:

That's pretty insane if Jagex is banning 15k-20k players every week. And what I find even harder to believe is that 8,000 people bought membership today. :shock:

 

Very useful link, thank you.

[Bxpprod]

I'm very much against the act of botting. However now they're just kiling a bee by removing all plants and flowers. Instead this lawsuit should go against the people who BOT. Jagex has even mail adresses & local data of them, why aren't they simply doing that, and calling every botter to the court?

 

You can kill off users, but leave the ability to obtain the material making cheating available up, changing nothing.

Or you can kill off the programmers than make cheating possible, meaning that [this particular] the cheating method is no longer available, ensuring that ALL users are dealt with at once.

[Saradomin_Mage]

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.

 

 

I'm guessing there is a formula that is searching the hiscores for the lowest ranked total level... pretty nifty idea (I've just started importing GE data for a calculator, so this interests me).

Assuming that I'm looking at this correctly:

That's pretty insane if Jagex is banning 15k-20k players every week. And what I find even harder to believe is that 8,000 people bought membership today. :shock:

 

Very useful link, thank you.

The drop in users might also be attributed to member status lapsing and the subsequent loss of highscore status after 2 weeks.

[Gandorf61]

The drop in users might also be attributed to member status lapsing and the subsequent loss of highscore status after 2 weeks.

 

I thought that too at first but it wouldn't make sense since that would mean that large groups of people lost membership on the exact same day (over 82k for the first drop). Also there's no set amount of days between each drop either if it was an automatic update of the highscores once a week.

[Sinkhan]

To be fair, the creator RSBuddy touted that he had a working version that broke bot nuke, but of course then didn't release it and signed on with Jagex.

 

There are very few things in software that are actually difficult or impossible.

 

Apart from the reems and reems of things that become impossible (or so close to impossible that they are not viable to do) when you factor in computing power, system limitations etc. etc.

 

What reems and reems?

 

I think you underestimate how far computing has come. Most of the "close to impossible that they are not viable to do" things stem from certain very challenging mathematical problems. Sure, cracking AES-256 bit encryption is at the moment is extremely difficult and not reasonable to do, but that is not to say that mathematics and computing won't advance to the point where it does become a much more feasible problem to approach.

 

It's logical and physical impossibilities like the halting problem and breaking quantum encryption that are things that computers should never be able to do.

 

Talking from a RS perspective, I doubt there will be anything that Jagex can ever do that is 100% immune to being broken.

[Sy_Accursed]

To be fair, the creator RSBuddy touted that he had a working version that broke bot nuke, but of course then didn't release it and signed on with Jagex.

 

There are very few things in software that are actually difficult or impossible.

 

Apart from the reems and reems of things that become impossible (or so close to impossible that they are not viable to do) when you factor in computing power, system limitations etc. etc.

 

What reems and reems?

 

I think you underestimate how far computing has come. Most of the "close to impossible that they are not viable to do" things stem from certain very challenging mathematical problems. Sure, cracking AES-256 bit encryption is at the moment is extremely difficult and not reasonable to do, but that is not to say that mathematics and computing won't advance to the point where it does become a much more feasible problem to approach.

 

It's logical and physical impossibilities like the halting problem and breaking quantum encryption that are things that computers should never be able to do.

 

Talking from a RS perspective, I doubt there will be anything that Jagex can ever do that is 100% immune to being broken.

 

Certainly things that are currently not viable do become viable with tech advances; however that does not mean they are viable NOW or under specific limiting conditions.

eg kids in a bedroom trying to code a bot advanced enough to circumvent all of jagex's new measures is pushing towards being very unviable/impossible as seen by the fact two guys who ran a bot as a professional business couldn't even manage to fix theirs. Doesn't mean its not technically possible especially going forward as tech advances more, but it does mean it doesn't seem (as we stand) to be near impossible for the average bot maker.

Another good example of limiting conditions would be that Met office computer hive that does something like 100 trillion calculations a second to make weather forecasts as accurate as possible that is certainly not viable or technically possible to do for anyone other than an organisation that can pump millions into setting such a massive system up; a home pc user certainly couldn't even come close.

[Markup]

To be fair, the creator RSBuddy touted that he had a working version that broke bot nuke, but of course then didn't release it and signed on with Jagex.

 

There are very few things in software that are actually difficult or impossible.

 

Apart from the reems and reems of things that become impossible (or so close to impossible that they are not viable to do) when you factor in computing power, system limitations etc. etc.

 

What reems and reems?

 

I think you underestimate how far computing has come. Most of the "close to impossible that they are not viable to do" things stem from certain very challenging mathematical problems. Sure, cracking AES-256 bit encryption is at the moment is extremely difficult and not reasonable to do, but that is not to say that mathematics and computing won't advance to the point where it does become a much more feasible problem to approach.

 

It's logical and physical impossibilities like the halting problem and breaking quantum encryption that are things that computers should never be able to do.

 

Talking from a RS perspective, I doubt there will be anything that Jagex can ever do that is 100% immune to being broken.

 

Certainly things that are currently not viable do become viable with tech advances; however that does not mean they are viable NOW or under specific limiting conditions.

eg kids in a bedroom trying to code a bot advanced enough to circumvent all of jagex's new measures is pushing towards being very unviable/impossible as seen by the fact two guys who ran a bot as a professional business couldn't even manage to fix theirs. Doesn't mean its not technically possible especially going forward as tech advances more, but it does mean it doesn't seem (as we stand) to be near impossible for the average bot maker.

Another good example of limiting conditions would be that Met office computer hive that does something like 100 trillion calculations a second to make weather forecasts as accurate as possible that is certainly not viable or technically possible to do for anyone other than an organisation that can pump millions into setting such a massive system up; a home pc user certainly couldn't even come close.

 

A distributed computing software such as Folding@Home

 

Not that I believe these people, but:

 

16th January: we have developed a fully working update that has flawlessly run several different test scripts for over 48 hours. Due to certain technical and legal complications we cannot release it to the public just yet. However please check back because we will go live very soon!

 

 

Current status (technical stuff)

 

Hooks - complete

Updater - final bug fixes

API - in development

Cloud distribution - in development

[Sy_Accursed]

They been saying that kinda crap since november and lol certain "legal complications"...perhaps the fact what you are doing is 100% illegal and you have suddenly seen that Jagex can and will utterly destroy you in court for a massive monetary settlement?

[Mercifull]

They will say anything to milk the last few dollars out of gullible subscribers. I'll believe it when i see it.

[Stev]

They will say anything to milk the last few dollars out of gullible subscribers. I'll believe it when i see it.

Jac was able to do it in under 2 weeks, mind you, with a lot of help. If the same group banded together and actually put a good deal of time and thought into it... The shoe'd be on the other foot. ;).

 

There are ways to get their clients working again, and few people do know how to do this, it's just time until that information reaches the wrong hands. :P.

[Sy_Accursed]

They will say anything to milk the last few dollars out of gullible subscribers. I'll believe it when i see it.

Jac was able to do it in under 2 weeks, mind you, with a lot of help. If the same group banded together and actually put a good deal of time and thought into it... The shoe'd be on the other foot. ;).

 

There are ways to get their clients working again, and few people do know how to do this, it's just time until that information reaches the wrong hands. :P.

 

Even so from what we've seen Jagex can legally obliterated these people AND with the bot nuke in place the bots will have to be far more intrusive to work thereby making them easier to detect and much easier to sue the ass off under DMCA etc.

 

So its more a question of do they think its still worth it/are they dumb enough to risk it.

[Stev]

They will say anything to milk the last few dollars out of gullible subscribers. I'll believe it when i see it.

Jac was able to do it in under 2 weeks, mind you, with a lot of help. If the same group banded together and actually put a good deal of time and thought into it... The shoe'd be on the other foot. ;).

 

There are ways to get their clients working again, and few people do know how to do this, it's just time until that information reaches the wrong hands. :P.

 

Even so from what we've seen Jagex can legally obliterated these people AND with the bot nuke in place the bots will have to be far more intrusive to work thereby making them easier to detect and much easier to sue the ass off under DMCA etc.

 

So its more a question of do they think its still worth it/are they dumb enough to risk it.

I believe Jagex got very lucky in this case. However, as was said previously, it will be easier for them now that they can reference this case from now on.

 

You may think making them more 'intrusive' will make them easier to detect but that's not always the case. There's always methods for anti-cheat/anti-ban. Jagex knew the method behind injection/reflection for years and yet they themselves couldn't detect them and took 9 or so years to break them.

 

Bots will return; in smaller numbers at first but it's only a matter of time. I guess the main thing holding the developers back would be the actual 'fear' of risking it.

 

EDIT: Or they just may not really care anymore. They had a good run and won for over 9 years. I'd be happy to walk away with my wallet filled and head held high. :P.

[Mercifull]

They will say anything to milk the last few dollars out of gullible subscribers. I'll believe it when i see it.

Jac was able to do it in under 2 weeks, mind you, with a lot of help. If the same group banded together and actually put a good deal of time and thought into it... The shoe'd be on the other foot. ;).

 

There are ways to get their clients working again, and few people do know how to do this, it's just time until that information reaches the wrong hands. :P.

Jacmob got it working but said it would require too much effort to constantly update and keep working. But lets have a hypothetical situation where they all band together to find a long term working solution where they take turns updating or use their clients computers as a giant distributed computing network to crack the system after each change...

 

The lawsuit has now set precedent, anyone else would be complete fools to publicly release such a bot, especially if any of them shared code with iBot (who's code now legally belongs to Jagex). If I were them I'd take whatever money they gained so far and run and hope that Jagex never file against them. Now that they have been so successful in court against iBot Jagex wont think twice about trying to get an even larger settlement out of anyone else that tries to sell a bot/scripts which hook into the game.

[Carl]

They will say anything to milk the last few dollars out of gullible subscribers. I'll believe it when i see it.

Jac was able to do it in under 2 weeks, mind you, with a lot of help. If the same group banded together and actually put a good deal of time and thought into it... The shoe'd be on the other foot. ;).

 

There are ways to get their clients working again, and few people do know how to do this, it's just time until that information reaches the wrong hands. :P.

 

But didn't Jac hand over his/their work to Jagex? Therefore using that same method wouldn't be possible, as I would presume Jagex have setup a system to prevent it? Or at least will if it becomes a problem?

[Stev]

They will say anything to milk the last few dollars out of gullible subscribers. I'll believe it when i see it.

Jac was able to do it in under 2 weeks, mind you, with a lot of help. If the same group banded together and actually put a good deal of time and thought into it... The shoe'd be on the other foot. ;).

 

There are ways to get their clients working again, and few people do know how to do this, it's just time until that information reaches the wrong hands. :P.

 

But didn't Jac hand over his/their work to Jagex? Therefore using that same method wouldn't be possible, as I would presume Jagex have setup a system to prevent it? Or at least will if it becomes a problem?

2 things:

 

Like I said, Jagex knew the exact method behind injection reflection for so long and it took them years to bust them. What makes you think they'd have already broken the method he used? I'm not sure if they've already got a system to prevent it... I've not discussed it with him since about 2 weeks afterward.

 

Jac had two weeks and was able to find a method which worked. These people have endless amounts of time to create and come up with different methods. Even 'screen-scraping'/pattern recognition can get very advanced. You can still run multiple clients on one machine using scraping. Resource usage would equal, or be only very slightly higher, then the previous Java clients.

[Mercifull]

I suppose it comes down to the investment required to develop a bot (both in time and cost), and the risk in potential lawsuit. Let's not forget that Jacmobs method would not have been a permanent solution to the clusterflutterer and was not viable.

 

It's my opinion that it's irrelevant IF a technical solution can be found or not, I just don't believe that its possible to hook into the game without getting into legal territory. It's not a field I'd be looking into getting into no mater how good a programmer I was and it's far too risky legally to invest money into.

 

I suppose it leaves colour bots left who are of legal ambiguity because they technically don't hook or inject into the game code. I'm sure this is where most efforts are being put into developing cheating software but from what was said at RuneFest they have a lot of stuff up their sleeves to combat those in the future.

[Sy_Accursed]

On colour bots apparently as of this week there's some sort of filter that changes the colouring of everything just slightly every 400 seconds or so; which breaks many of the more basic colour based bots who are trying to use more precise colours to do more advanced tasks. Saw some rants about it as it was breaking some legitimate screen scraping based aids (eg like how DGS thingie does a screen scrape to get the map)

[Stev]

they have a lot of stuff up their sleeves to combat those in the future.

Depending on the input methods, there's nothing they can do to detect them. Say they started tracking mouse movements... There's already functions available which could get around that. These bots can be completely randomized to where they are entirely human-like. They're designed to make intentional mistakes, click anywhere in an objects W and H, select random colors/patterns, etc. I strongly, for many reasons, believe these bots, provided they're written properly, will be a bigger task for Jagex to tackle then the inj/ref.

 

 

On colour bots apparently as of this week there's some sort of filter that changes the colouring of everything just slightly every 400 seconds or so; which breaks many of the more basic colour based bots who are trying to use more precise colours to do more advanced tasks. Saw some rants about it as it was breaking some legitimate screen scraping based aids (eg like how DGS thingie does a screen scrape to get the map)

Real men use pattern recognition. :P.

[@Dan3HitU]

On colour bots apparently as of this week there's some sort of filter that changes the colouring of everything just slightly every 400 seconds or so; which breaks many of the more basic colour based bots who are trying to use more precise colours to do more advanced tasks. Saw some rants about it as it was breaking some legitimate screen scraping based aids (eg like how DGS thingie does a screen scrape to get the map)

If that's true, it could even break SCAR, which still works as far as I'm aware.

[Carl]

Is "As far as I'm aware" information from this week?

[Guest jrhairychest]

Like I said, Jagex knew the exact method behind injection reflection for so long and it took them years to bust them. What makes you think they'd have already broken the method he used? I'm not sure if they've already got a system to prevent it... I've not discussed it with him since about 2 weeks afterward.

 

Do you have any evidence of this regarding Jac because the last time I asked no-one could actually provide any. Rumour is one thing, fact is another. What proof do you have of this?

 

Jac had two weeks and was able to find a method which worked. These people have endless amounts of time to create and come up with different methods. Even 'screen-scraping'/pattern recognition can get very advanced. You can still run multiple clients on one machine using scraping. Resource usage would equal, or be only very slightly higher, then the previous Java clients.

 

Just like anything else in computing someone could easily devise a system to try to avoid detection. However it’s never undetectable. The minute someone comes out with something, a solution can be devised no matter how long it takes. Were you in the same batch that said these bots could never be stopped the last time?

[Stev]

Like I said, Jagex knew the exact method behind injection reflection for so long and it took them years to bust them. What makes you think they'd have already broken the method he used? I'm not sure if they've already got a system to prevent it... I've not discussed it with him since about 2 weeks afterward.

 

Do you have any evidence of this regarding Jac because the last time I asked no-one could actually provide any. Rumour is one thing, fact is another. What proof do you have of this?

 

Jac had two weeks and was able to find a method which worked. These people have endless amounts of time to create and come up with different methods. Even 'screen-scraping'/pattern recognition can get very advanced. You can still run multiple clients on one machine using scraping. Resource usage would equal, or be only very slightly higher, then the previous Java clients.

 

Just like anything else in computing someone could easily devise a system to try to avoid detection. However it’s never undetectable. The minute someone comes out with something, a solution can be devised no matter how long it takes. Were you in the same batch that said these bots could never be stopped the last time?

Physical proof, none. I spoke to him, we exchanged a lot of thoughts and I'm not one to screeny each one of my conversations. From a coders perspective, what we spoke about should have worked. I never asked to try or even see the result as I've not been in that department for years, although I'm more then certain it would have. I was not for or against bots, as they really don't bother or affect me. I simply share my ideas, knowledge, and experience and let those who'll listen benefit from it. :P.

 

I've spent more of my time writing hacks for FPSs like Battlefield, WarRock, CA, etc, then I have spent playing RuneScape, but when ever they updated and were able to detect our hack we had a new one out and working within minutes. I know, a different area, different language, yadda yadda... But it took Jagex over 9 years to finally break 2 methods.

 

I was one that doubted they'd be able to break injection/reflection, yes. I didn't expect an update as large as they did; no one did. Mind you, the way they implemented it was terrible; laggy game play, slow to play, etc. However, I've known of other ways for bot clients to work for quite some time (knowledge isn't bannable), just lacked interest to pursue or spread them. They will take off in time, once other people grasp them, but until then enjoy RuneScape while you can still cut your yews and kill your avansies. Not a threat, I'm simply confident they'll return.

[The Dark Lord]

Why not just tell Jagex about your ideas? :V

[Guest jrhairychest]

Physical proof, none. I spoke to him, we exchanged a lot of thoughts and I'm not one to screeny each one of my conversations. From a coders perspective, what we spoke about should have worked. I never asked to try or even see the result as I've not been in that department for years, although I'm more then certain it would have. I was not for or against bots, as they really don't bother or affect me. I simply share my ideas, knowledge, and experience and let those who'll listen benefit from it. :P.

So, for all anyone knows anything or nothing could have been said. For all you know the Jagex team couldve threatened him with the same legal action that seems to have worked here and he told you otherwise.

 

I've spent more of my time writing hacks for FPSs like Battlefield, WarRock, CA, etc, then I have spent playing RuneScape, but when ever they updated and were able to detect our hack we had a new one out and working within minutes. I know, a different area, different language, yadda yadda... But it took Jagex over 9 years to finally break 2 methods.

I dont believe for one minute they spent 9 years trying to break 2 issues. Sure I reckon they knew something was going on but resourced it in bans for the most part. They only acted when the issue became a serious problem and the game became inundated in bots. A little late perhaps but they did do it. A little OT, instead of using your time to hack games why not be more creative and make them? After all its much easier to break something than to create it, or is that the idea?

 

I was one that doubted they'd be able to break injection/reflection, yes. I didn't expect an update as large as they did; no one did. Mind you, the way they implemented it was terrible; laggy game play, slow to play, etc. However, I've known of other ways for bot clients to work for quite some time (knowledge isn't bannable), just lacked interest to pursue or spread them. They will take off in time, once other people grasp them, but until then enjoy RuneScape while you can still cut your yews and kill your avansies. Not a threat, I'm simply confident they'll return.

Fair play at least you admit that you were wrong on the issue. Im not convinced of your thoughts that theyll return. Of course, there will be some efforts made to try to bot but as Mercifull quite rightly said I doubt there will be any long term solutions. Additionally, now that a precedent has been set there's a lot to lose in doing it.