RuneScape's official Twitter account unbanned after proving that, no, the game wasn't secretly an 8-year-old child

An image of a gnome child on a missing poster, as part of a collab between Runescape and Smite.

(Image credit: Jagex / Hi-Rez Studios)

You might have noticed that RuneScape was briefly banned from Twitter, yesterday—despite its Old School RuneScape and Jagex accounts remaining up. Not a peep, nor a whisper as to the how and why, just snapped out of existence by Mr. Musk.

Looks like RuneScape’s Twitter/X got removed from r/2007scape

Considering the latest controversies surrounding the subject of banning bots—and a few alleged difficulties negotiating with the company's customer support—a couple of jibes made their way into the comments of that particular thread.

"They shouldn't have used bots on Twitter," one commenter wrote. Another remarks: "I guess OSRS themselves is one of the 38," referencing a recent statement that only 38 out of dozens of thousands of bans in 2024 were mis-applied. Turns out, Twitter thought that RuneScape—yes, the official RuneScape account with over 300,000 followers—was helmed by an eight-year-old kid 15 years ago. No I'm not joking.

Twitter has a minimum age requirement of 13 and, even if you're older, you'll have your account suspended if you weren't of tweeting age when you signed up. As per the help centre, you can get your account back if you agree to have any pre-13 content scrubbed from it. A sensible policy, just, uh, mis-applied in this case.

I reached out to Jagex's senior communications manager Danni Amos, who confirmed that—yes, RuneScape was tangled up in this policy. "X/Twitter flagged the account as having been created by someone who was under the age of 13," she writes, adding that RuneScape's 2001 release date was used as the account's date of birth—a fun joke, and one that would take 15 whole years to bite Jagex in the butt.

The account signed up for Twitter in 2009, which, as Amos points out, would've made it 8 years old. That'd make it 23 now—but as previously mentioned, the age requirement applies retroactively. "This was not the case and, after providing some evidence to X this morning, the account has since been reinstated."

So there you have it. Some poor souls at Jagex had to spend a good portion of their work day convincing Twitter that their social media account was not, in fact, made by an 8-year-old kid. Oh to be a fly CC'd into those emails.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.