Landmark Jagex Victory Over Bots in Legal Battle

I believe they kept things secret because they were closer and closer to finding the solution to stop them once and for all. Had they been publicizing every step they took, or even just a few steps, they would have been giving warning to the bot makers/users and they could have done more to prevent it by changing their software or finding other ways to evade the nuke. It sucks that the player base didn't know more about what was going on behind the scenes, but I think it was necessary to produce the results we now see today. Just my two cents.

You're probably right. I hate being kept in the dark about these things, but any details they let out ultimately would have hurt their efforts. And that "we're fighting the bots" rhetoric didn't have anyone convinced anyway. Based on their recent track record I probably would not have been convinced by more details until I had seen it in action. I remember a forum post hinting at the bot nuke maybe a month before it was announced (essentially it said "we have a plan to get rid of all the bots, but it's a secret plan."), but the common interpretation was that they were just playing damage control rather than saying anything I could take at face value.

Anyway, Jagex posted an update on the legal victory just yesterday. Here's what they had to say.

We’re delighted to be able to announce that we’ve finally triumphed in our 2-year legal battle with Impulse Software, the developers of the iBOT RuneScape botting software.

Their statement on their websites sums it up very nicely:

[Right here they quote the letter from the first post]

Obviously, this is a big win for us, but it’s also just one of the latest initiatives in our ongoing offensive to permanently stamp out botting and gold-farming in RuneScape. First and foremost, we’ve remained dedicated to this cause to provide you - our esteemed community - an enduringly great game, and we’ve no intention of stopping here.

We remain committed to our ongoing work to ensure that the successes of Bot Nuke Day are never undone by staying a few steps ahead in the arms race with the remaining bot developers and gold farmers. We’re already well underway with our next generation of anti-botting software called Optimus, which is going to be released shortly, and we’re also currently developing ways to remove the remaining screen-scraper bots from the game. We’ll also be continuing to fight gold-farmers on every front.

The team has been dedicated to eliminating the last of the performance issues experienced by some users since Bot Nuke Day, and we will shortly be releasing an update intended to resolve these problems. We’re also planning further improvements to game accessibility and performance in future updates this year.

Have fun!

Cheers,

Mark Gerhard
CEO & CTO