Jagex bans millions of Runescape account for using bots

Jagex' Runescape servers have likely become a lot less crowded as the company has taken significant steps against bot users and gold farmers. A "bot-nuking" game patch released on October 25th resulted in 1.5 million accounts being banned on that day, with an average of 9,000 accounts being banned per minute right now.

Millions of Runescape accounts have been banned over the last couple of days, decreasing the number of active players by 60 percent! Jagex estimates bot-nuking day rendered 98 percent of bots ineffective.

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."

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%

Source: Joystiq