Jagex Games Wins Legal Battle Against RuneScape Botters

You know all those annoying farming botters in free-to-play games like the browser-based MMO RuneScape, where they just gather and kill mobs of NPCs? Well, Jagex kicked the snot out of the guys who made those bots in a decisive legal battle that will prevent those same guys from creating more bots for Jagex' games.

Mark and Eric Snellman tried defending their case of using bot farmers and bot macros in Jagex' RuneScape. The bots enabled players to basically farm resources all day long for a number of purposes...mainly to get rich quick without actually doing any of the work...just like how many CEOs use their workers to get to the top and then outsource their jobs to China to save a few bucks. Anyway, Jagex kicked the gonads off the Snellman's botting scheme and now it's all done and over with.

Mark Gerhard, CEO & CTO of Jagex, stated that...

“We began the legal action against the Snellmans over two years ago as a part of our ongoing commitment to ridding RuneScape of bots and gold farmers. Faced with this significant challenge we have continued to demonstrate that we will never shy away from difficult battles, we don’t compromise on taking the right course of action and, regardless of the time, money or effort involved we always do what it takes in order to protect our community”....: “We have spared no expense fighting this case, as demonstrated by the seven figure bill this action has cost, but the point of this and other cases of its kind, is that we will continue bring to justice those who set out to harm the game or our beloved community. We are delighted to say that we have convincingly neutered them after a very long battle.”

A bittersweet victory, no doubt. I'm sure some people are wondering what's the big deal and why they would pour so much into stopping botters, but let me tell you that botters do ruin a game. Not only do they cause massive lag spikes at times, they eat up network resources doing nothing but farming. What's worse is that the farming has nothing to do with having fun but just so people can be virtually rich, which kind of makes no sense at all...unless, of course, you're the scoundrels selling the bots, like Mark and Eric Snellman.

Anyways, I'm glad they won against the bot-guys. Coupled with Jagex' Bot Nuke software, they claim 98% of all bots have been removed from the game. Now if only GamersFirst can follow in their footsteps and secure the same kind of victory against the hackers in APB: Reloaded then the interwebz will be a pleasant place for all.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.