RuneScape dev panel highlights incredible success of bot bans
Over the past few weeks, we've heard a great deal about browser MMO RuneScape's struggle against botting and RMT. The bot problem has become progressively worse over the past year, with bot makers countering every change developers made to stop their bots from working. This week developer Jagex celebrated bot-nuking day as it deployed a massive update designed to permanently stop all of the popular reflection and injection bots from working.
At this year's annual RuneFest event, Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard presented a fantastic insider panel on the facts and figures behind bot-nuking day. Mark explained the company's position -- that normal players botting to speed up gameplay was counter to the goals of RuneScape. "We don't want your computer to play with our computer," he told attendees, "we want you to have fun with our community." Before delving into facts and figures, Mark reminded attendees of the element of unfairness that bots create. "I want to know that if I'm putting in 30 minutes this evening, that that 30 minutes is equal to everyone else's 30 minutes."
Want to know how many million accounts were banned since bot-nuking day? Read on for a summary of the facts and figures from the talk and to watch the full video in HD.
The figures below are taken directly from the dev panel. While they aren't all exact figures, they show the incredible success of Jagex's new "Cluster Flutterer" technology in fighting bots.
New botting accounts created every day | -- | 100,000 - 200,000 |
Gold-farming accounts banned on bot-nuking day | -- | 1,500,000 |
Accounts being banned per minute right now | -- | 9,000 |
Gold farming accounts banned since Tuesday | -- | 7,700,000 |
Accounts created from China and Korea per week | -- | Old: 173,000, New: 953 |
Decrease in player activity since bot-nuking day | -- | 60% |
Banned accounts that were paid members | -- | 10% |
Bots estimated to have been rendered ineffective | -- | 98% |
