Old School RuneScape has had a brush with the banhammer. Jagex told players on Reddit today that an unspecified number of players have been banned for “repeatedly harassing a number of people within the community.”
“The players who were banned have made posts claiming that their actions were harmless and they were merely banned for simply performing emotes in the background of one person’s livestream. This is completely false. The players whose accounts we took action against spent their time spreading racism, hatred and abuse throughout the game. We wanted to post an excerpt of their chat logs to show some of the hatred they are bringing to the game, but we simply can’t bring ourselves to publicise something so horrendous. These players harassed numerous individuals in this fashion, disrupting gameplay and bringing a halt to other people’s enjoyment of the game.”
In a followup post, Jagex noted that one of the bans was handed out to a player “dressing up as a member of the KKK.” Today I learned it’s possible to combine benign clothing to dress up as a member of the KKK in RuneScape. Another player opines that while dressing up as a racist cult member is bad enough, wielding a noose and spamming about killing a certain racial group was the clincher. Today I learned RuneScape has wieldable nooses. And fewer racists today than yesterday.