Runescape bot nuking event bans 1.5 million bots in one day

http://youtu.be/VZHalHeWer8

At this year's Runefest event, Jagex revealed a number of alarming statistics regarding the number of bot accounts and gold farmers the devs have recently booted out of Runescape. The figures, picked out by Massively , suggest that between 100,000 and 200,000 bot accounts are created in Runescape every day.

Jagex CEO explains why the developers decided to come down so hard on botting. "It breaks the game. How does it break the game? Well, it's not just the balancing, the economy and the inflation and the deflation, which obviously a lot of you feel so acutely, but it fundamentally changes the nature of the game. It takes it away from what is a multiplayer, social experience to a single player, anti-social experience."

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%

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.