JAGEX FINALLY CRACKING DOWN ON RWT (OSRS)


Date	2025-09-16
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/K4IobWysTEs

Summary

Gnomonkey reacts to Jagex's September 2025 blog post saying it will ban players who buy gold from real-world traders, even for first offences. He discusses how botting depressed the economy, argues buyers (the demand side) are the root cause, doubts the penalties will really be enforced, and wants Jagex to also crack down on account services such as Inferno cape, Colosseum quiver and Blorva sellers.

Outline

0:00 Jagex's new blog on real-world trading and the botting problem
1:17 Economic impact of bots on prices: Sunfire splinters, Colosseum, Oathplate
3:18 Reading Jagex's blog post on real-world trading
5:01 Targeting gold buyers instead of only bots: the leaking-ship analogy
7:15 Whether the punishments will be effective, muling and item confiscation
10:07 Account services (Inferno cape, Blorva, Colosseum quivers) and bans
13:29 Why Jagex sells bonds and why that is not hypocritical
16:09 Final thoughts, golden age botting, RS3 Leagues note

Topics covered

Real-world trading

(0:00) In September 2025 Jagex published a new blog post about real-world trading, announcing it would take a harsher line against players caught buying gold from illicit sellers.
(3:31) Jagex's blog defines real-world trading as buying or selling in the real world for real money in exchange for anything of value relating to Old School accounts, including items, names and services.
(3:31) Jagex's blog says real-world trading creates a financial incentive for people who do not care about the game to flood it with bots and throwaway accounts to gather gold to sell.
(5:59) Gnomonkey says historically Jagex treated gold buyers more leniently than sellers when issuing penalties for real-world trading.
(6:25) Gnomonkey says Jagex has an incentive to be lenient with gold buyers because buyers are paying members who keep playing, while a banned bot just comes back and pays for membership again.
(6:55) According to the blog, Jagex will issue bans, temporary or permanent depending on the situation, even for first offences, and will confiscate items from offenders who buy gold.
(7:25) Gnomonkey says he has heard, as hearsay and not as something he knows, that buyers used to get a one to two week ban and have the cash stack removed only if it was left in the bank, while gold spent on items like a Zaryte crossbow or put into the Blast Furnace coffer was not taken away.
(8:20) Gnomonkey says if buyers could keep items bought with the gold, the only consequence would be a temporary ban, so he doubts whether Jagex will follow through on item confiscation and says the only way to find out is hearing from people who get banned.
(8:50) Gnomonkey asks whether Jagex will track muling, such as buyers trading the gold to alt accounts to avoid confiscation or bans.
(9:18) Gnomonkey says Jagex needs to lean towards permanent bans and take a scorched-earth approach to gold buyers, because they are the root of the market and bots will never stop coming back while gold buyers exist.
(16:13) Gnomonkey says he hopes Jagex really swings the hammer, believes they want to, and notes they have been hiring many people in anti-cheat.

Botting

(0:30) Gnomonkey says the Solo Mission video on botting concluded there are many more bots than people thought, and that the golden age of player counts has led to a surge in botting at many locations.
(0:30) As of September 2025, Gnomonkey says the top-end moneymakers are all under 20 million GP per hour and that it is much harder to make money.
(1:27) Gnomonkey cites bot-driven price drops: Sunfire splinters hit a low of about 75 GP each, Colosseum was around 6M GP per hour (equal to Hydra and below Nex and Theatre of Blood), and Oathplate pieces fell to an all-time low of about 60M before recovering to about 85M.
(2:01) Gnomonkey says Jagex has been cracking down on botting, with a major ban wave at the end of August 2025, and that prices of heavily botted items started to come back up afterward.
(2:29) Gnomonkey says bot numbers rise whenever player counts rise, and recalls that in 2007 Jagex responded to out-of-control bots by removing free trade and the Wilderness, a nuclear option he does not want repeated.
(4:05) Gnomonkey says bots also make it hard to find worlds for content, giving the example of finding a God Wars Dungeon world, and make playing alongside highly visible bots infuriating.
(5:01) Gnomonkey says that previously the hiscores for very high-profit bosses were filled with bots, with ranks five through about fifty botted, though it looks a bit brighter now.
(5:29) Gnomonkey uses a leaking-ship analogy: banning bots is like bailing water out, while the gold buyers are the holes in the hull, so Jagex should focus on buyers.
(15:13) Gnomonkey says during prosperous times like the current golden age it is especially important to crack down on botting, comparing it to algae covering a lake when the weather is nice.
(15:42) Gnomonkey says the recent botting has made all the moneymakers worse and many items nearly worthless.

Bonds

(13:15) Gnomonkey says some people call Jagex hypocritical for selling bonds as a way to buy gold, but he calls selling bonds a genius play to compete with gold sellers.
(13:44) Gnomonkey says Jagex selling bonds gives it control over the gold market, and that the money goes back into the game rather than to a computer farm in a foreign country.
(14:14) Gnomonkey says buying gold from Jagex via bonds helps the game because more revenue lets Jagex hire more people and make more updates, including player support.

Opinion: Account services

(10:16) Gnomonkey says Jagex has not banned anyone for buying an Inferno cape for many years and that login services for items like the Blorva armour remain a huge market even after Discord crackdowns.
(10:50) Gnomonkey says he finds it lame that people buy services for cosmetic items like Blorva that offer only status, and that it reduces the status of the item for everyone.
(11:21) Gnomonkey says seeing someone with Blorva armour makes him wonder whether they bought it, which lowers the item's status for him.
(11:53) Gnomonkey says you can often tell from an account whether someone really earned an item, for instance accounts going from no Colosseum glory to about 45k glory on a first attempt, which he calls obviously bought.
(12:20) Gnomonkey says he sees bot-bought Colosseum quivers all the time, and that a long time ago Jagex used to ban for services and remove Inferno capes but stopped trying.
(12:48) Gnomonkey thinks Jagex's incentive to ban servicers is minimal because the harm is only to item status and banning long-term players who got items like Blorva is undesirable, similar to the gold buyer situation.
(13:15) Gnomonkey hopes the crackdown on gold buyers will also lead to more action against account servicers, though the blog is specifically about real-world trade.

Gnomonkey

(1:00) As of September 2025, Gnomonkey says he is extremely close to 100,000 subscribers and his wife has planned a special surprise for when he reaches it.
(16:40) Gnomonkey says he is playing RuneScape 3 Leagues on stream; he had a crash-out after day one because it was slow, but Jagex lowered the relic point costs, so he expects to keep playing and get into endgame PvM.