The botting problem in Old School RuneScape is a persistent thorn in players’ side to the point that most believe that developer Jagex is doing nothing about the problem. However, OSRS developer Mod Sween talked about the matter in last month’s livestream, as he attempted to reassure fans that the team is on the case.
Sween opens the discussion by calling out some stats of bot banning activity, noting that over 200K bots were banned from the game during July and August, adding to a total of nearly 2.4M bots that have been kicked from the MMORPG from January to August of this year. He also pushes back against the idea that Jagex keeps bots in-game in order to pad population numbers, staying that the presumption is “absolutely not true.”
Sween then talks about what Jagex is doing to attack the matter, including more focus on activities where botting is the most rampant, hiring on more people specifically to counter botting and cheating, and a promise of bigger counter-bot initiatives while also acknowledging that many fans might have no patience for hearing that promise again.
Ultimately Sween says that he is speaking with players so that they don’t feel ignored. “I feel like we’ve got strong leaders who want to do right by the community,” he says. “I don’t know what else to say other than I promise we are working on stuff. […] We just kind of need understanding.”
