Hello again,

My understanding of your issues is that you believe there are too many bots and we are not doing enough to combat them. This has lead you to believe that there is a reason why we want to keep bots in game. Would this be an accurate assessment of your issues?

It is very hard for me to explain the situation as the information I can give you is limited at the moment, but I'll do my best.

I think the most important difference in the way that you an we view things is that we have split botters into two catergories. Firstly, there are cheaters that bot and secondly there are players that bot. What we are interested in is taking out the cheaters mercilessly while giving the players the chance to change. So, if we catch a cheater botting they can kiss their account goodbye. However, if we see a player botting, we'll roll them back and give them an opportunity to play normally again.

It is quite possible for individuals to move from the player category to the cheat category which is why if someone bots a second they lose their account. The reason why we make this difference is two fold. Firstly, we would like players who make a mistake once to keep playing and perm banning this accounts stops that from happening. Also, perm banning an account for botting in the first instance removes a players investment in the game and thus they are free to continue botting on other accounts. If their investment is still there (ie they can still play their main account) then they will not want to risk losing that. Therefore, the temp bans and roll backs reduces the amount of bots. The same is also true for players buying banned accounts back - giving them their investment in the game back ensures they play by the rules.

Now, you say that rolling accounts back isn't a disincentive to botting. A few days ago a maxed player was caught botting. It was a first offence so we rolled him back and he lost half his XP in every skill, he went from 25 99s to none over night. I don't think anyone would doubt that that's got to hurt. This player knows he can no longer bot as he'll be gone if he does.

Now looking at the botting categories (players and cheats), guess which ones you see most often in game? Yep it's the cheats. So, most accounts we catch will be permanently banned.

Your goal and our goal regarding bots is exactly the same, we both want to get rid of them all. However, the difference between you and us is how we achieve that goal.

Mat.

When I was at home last night, I read through every post on this thread, it took me a good few hours but it gave me a more complete understanding of where you are coming from. There were a few people saying that this dialogue was just between you and me Shady but to put everyone's mind at rest, most of my comments to Shady are relevant to other comments in this thread.

I think the crux of most of the arguments in this thread rely on two statements. The first statement is that Jagex make money out of players botting. This could not be further from the truth. The accounts that use bots usually pay their membership using stolen credit cards. Although our security for credit cards is very good, it cost us money to maintain this security and ensure we are being as secure as possible. On top of that we have to pay for the staff that work in the anti-macro team and this costs hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. On top of that, we also have to pay for developers developing systems to catch the bots and the game developers to change the game to stop the bots. When a developer is developing a system to take care of bots they are not developing a different system which is designed to increase our revenue, so there is an additional cost there. Every time a J-Mod reads one of these threads and responds to it there is a cost involved too which is attributed to bots. So, when I say bots cost us money, it is the truth. I know some people will have difficulty believing that statement, but it really is the truth.

Now, bearing in mind what I said above; we have investors who want to make money on their investment. To be honest, I don't think you would be in the investment business for long if you didn't. So, it is in the investors' interest to remove the bots as much as it is in your interest.

The second statement is that if Jagex are so against bots, why doesn't Jagex just ban them?

If it were that simple, yes we would. Sadly, it is not that simple. There is a very good reason as to why can't communicate a lot at the moment. It won't last forever and when you know what the reason is it will all make sense. However, based on the above statement, you can be sure we are doing everything possible to take out every bot from the game as we believe that free trade and a practically bot less game can coexist.

Using players' ideas is at the cornerstone of what we do and our anti-macro team is no different. They use you to find out information on trends as well as ideas on how to combat the bots so don't feel any of your ideas (or ideas on other threads) have gone to waste. The only downside of this is that we can't enter into a dialogue regarding the ideas as paying attention to one idea and not another, or asking for specific information filters down to the bot makers who can use it to identify probable loopholes.

The distinction we make between a player that bots and a cheater that bots is something which is backed up in fact and the evidence shows that this is an effective method to combat the creation of bots. I can understand why some people would have a difficulty accepting this premise, but it works and our ultimate is to remove the bot population.

The senior management team as well as every other team in Jagex are completely aware of the bit situation and the feedback from the players. It is one of Community Management's roles to make sure all teams are aware of what the players are saying. So, rest assured that although we are not talking much at the moment, we are aware of how you feel.