We are Mods Infinity & Stevew - Player Support Managers for RuneScape & Old School - AMA!

How many times a day do popular accounts try to be recovered? (Zezima, b0aty, Sparc mac etc.)

A daily figure is a bit tricky, but...

Zezima's account has received over 88,000 account recovery attempts! The number of fraudulent attempts has slowed down, but they still come through. Bonus stat: that account has also been reported over 2,300 times!

Hey, as a $300 million dollar company why dont you have phone customer support?

The Player Support team is relatively small - providing phone support would likely get clogged up with lots of ban appeals I imagine, and I don't think would necessarily be the best use of our resource. We respond to the majority of tickets within 24 hours, and we did run a trial of live chat a while back, which is something we are going to look at again.

Can we get a delay on the authenticator please?

So it's something which we see a fair bit on reddit - and while it's on the list of requests for our web team to review, there are a few considerations...

1. From the data available to us, and from the accounts we review - having a delay on the removal of an authenticator wouldn't have actually prevented the hijacking. We'd also have to build a way for us to alert players within RuneScape that a request to remove the authenticator has been made, as the hijacker would have access to the registered e-mail, and would just delete any e-mails sent from us. There's also a reliance on the player who's been hijacked to log into game during the delay removal period to be notified there's been a request to remove the auth. We'd also need to look at how long the delay is, if it's opt in/out, etc

2. While we understand the request is to have it as an optional feature, from our experience lots of people might set up delays but when they need to actually remove a feature, get frustrated with waiting, and contact Jagex to speed up the removal. We see it a lot with bank PINs, and so we need to be conscious about that. It's definitely not a reason to not do it - but it does feature on our 'to think about list'. For context, in the real world, if you wanted to update something to do with your personal banking, provided you pass their security checks, they wouldn't put a delay on making those changes. There's already a way to prevent the authenticator disabled, and we want to focus on ensuring players are aware of that, which is by keeping their registered e-mail safe.

3. We want to offer new, convenient, easy ways for players to keep their accounts secure which will have the biggest impact - not just update existing features which we don't feel would change a whole lot. This is an ongoing discussion at senior management level - as there's are naturally lots of projects and priorities being worked on. The majority of accounts hijacked don't have an authenticator enabled in the first place. I imagine if a hijacker tries to access an account & recognises it's got an authenticator, they just move onto the next account, and don't try and breach the registered e-mail etc.

4. It isn't considered critical, as it's not a flaw in the system. By that I mean if people have a secure registered e-mail, good security awareness, don't share their accounts, etc then they won't need to have a delay on their authenticator to prevent unauthorised access. With that said - we want to offer as many options as possible which work for the community - and there are lots of internal discussions happening about new features etc.

So - it's on the list, we hear you loud and clear, but equally we want to make sure the team (when they can) works on the most impactful, advanced security features which will genuinely improve account security for everyone.

I'm familiar with the number of times Botters and RWT cry out their ban was fake, and not deserved only to be called out later stating otherwise. However, there are still occasions where players have their accounts falsely banned, and then quashed upon further investigation.

A majority of these instances involve players using Multiple Accounts and multi-logging, with the trigger being a mass number of reports from players who see a large number of similar accounts doing the same thing. (Remember these are bans that were quashed.)

• Why is this still an issue, and what's being done to prevent it?

These cases are so very rare, but if it does happen, the team look at what triggered it, and then act to prevent it from happening again. If it does happen again, it'll be for a different reason - but the same process repeats itself. There are also a lot of internal quality measures and checks we use to try and prevent this stuff from happening in the first place.

Finally, if we do make a mistake, we put our hands up, sort the player out and make improvements wherever possible.

Is it legal to assign your left-click to a key on your keyboard? I believe this is called 1:1 macro. This makes many skills much easier (alching, thieving, etc.)

If it's something that's possible in Windows Mousekeys then it's fine! Anything else is likely to pose a risk to your account.

if your able to tell us, how many accounts have been banned in the past year, and how much gp has been removed from the game becase of these bans?

First question in and a good one to start off with!

In the past year we've banned around 4,000,000 accounts. The vast majority of these are bot accounts, which you probably won't ever see, as we ban them before they can have any impact.

We don't disclose exact wealth removed (we also take into account the differences between the value in OS & RS) but it's in the trillions.

Have you guys ever considered a 'Live Chat' kind of service?

Yep! We ran a live chat trial on our Support Centre a short while ago and while we definitely saw its benefits, there's a lot of work to do before we consider fully launching a live chat service. It's definitely something we'd love to do though, so watch this space. :)

why does it seem like people who ddoss never get justice?

Also, a friend sent in information to tipoff@jagex of the the guy who hacked him including actual ips and other proof of the account associated, when will he hear back or how soon does jagex follow up and investigate?

It isn't easy to accurately identify individuals behind certain attacks, and I imagine even harder to attempt any form of legal action or prosecution - but it can and does happen. We'll always investigate any sort of attack against our games, but wouldn't necessarily be able to share the outcome.

The [email protected] mailbox is reviewed & sorted on a daily basis. We aren't able to reply to every e-mail received, but please let your friend know the information they've supplied will be looked into and used to aid our ongoing hijacking prevention work.

Hello
I'm Darma and I speak behalf Hispanic and Latin American community.
I have some points that concerns my community and to myself.
1. How do you guys plan to fight against RWT in Latin American countries. I belong to an Hispanic clan chat and we already reported a lot of players that are entering our clan chat and other Hispanic/Latinamerican clans.
We've been reporting all these people of the clans that rwt but they haven't been banned at all.
2. We need more PMods, in this case for Hispanic people. They are only 4 Spanish speaker PMods (that i know) and they are not active anymore.
3. How can Hispanic people and myself help each other? Regarding rules, security, etc. Probably making a subreddit for Hispanic users (moderated by Jmods for control) to answer questions, suggestions, issues, etc. This would be for volunteers to help people that don't speak Spanish to be able to ask for help to Jmods.
Thank you for you time.

Hey - thanks for joining us today. :)

1. you can send us details about RWT activity by e-mailing [email protected] - we won't reply, but we will review your e-mail!

2. I'll flag this to Mod Nia who looks after the PMod team so she can consider it in the next recruitment round. It's important to us that PMods are representative of the community, so thanks for letting us know!

3. We'd definitely support any efforts to help other players out. If I'm honest we probably wouldn't be able to officially host a subreddit, but if you do make one, please let me know!

Can talking get you perm banned? Like fucking crazy racism, luring etc...

Permanent bans are a last resort. We'd only consider applying such an offence in the most serious of cases - but it has happened when the evidence was so extreme & we simply don't want that person to be apart of the community.

Jagex seems to have a 'we know best' ideology when it comes to customer support, do you really think the removal of the ability to argue a case after it's been what some people could say 'unfairly' reviewed. There's numerous cases of people claimed of rule breaking where the detection system/mod review gets it wrong, whats the answer to this?

When an account is banned it goes through lots detailed checks.

Players can send in an appeal on this page: https://support.runescape.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115002238729-Account-Bans

The account is checked again by another JMod - if the decision is for the ban to remain, then the logic used is that the ban wouldn't be overturned if it was reviewed again, as it's already gone through multiple checks.

Thank you to everyone for their questions! We're heading off now - but I hope you enjoyed and we'll speak to you all soon!

Infinity & Steve signing out

HELP https://imgur.com/a/dETni This is a picture of an email i received after accidentally clicking a harmful link back in 2014, as you can clearly see jagex account guardian clearly secured my rs3 account. Problem was oldschool runescape at that time had no account protection available so it was vulnerable, needless to say the hijacker accessed it and used it to farm gold. I then received a permanent ban for this despite getting the account back into my control asap. Now i've tried many times to get these seen, yet had no support. I've moved on and made a new account now, but i still want this one back as i still think this ban was entirely unfair. My question is, can you help me with this problem please?

Hey - if you've already sent in an appeal found here: https://support.runescape.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115002238729-Account-Bans and it was denied, then there's nothing further we can do. Sorry!

Do you guys ban players that use auto clickers often? I've got a friend that thinks he can get away with it and that you guys can't detect a certain auto clicker.

We do take action against auto clickers - so please tell your friend to stop!! :)

Could you guys ever consider a rework the F2P Trade Limit? At the moment you can only trade 25K. Most rune items are over this amount. Could it possibly become more lax through quest points, total level, playtime, or any of the above? While it does probably serve its purpose in slowing down gold farmer, it is also quite inconvenient for legitimate players. What are your thoughts on this? The current trade limit settings have been in place for nearly 7 years I believe. Is something more modern possible? Just to be clear I understand the reasoning for the limit, just if there is some way to reach a middle ground for legitimate players. Thank you.

It's a good suggestion and one I will raise in next weeks RS product meeting. :)

When are we going to get a real ban appeal system?

Players can submit a ban appeal here: https://support.runescape.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115002238729-Account-Bans

Passwords still aren't case sensitive. Why?

It's something the team are looking at, but since joining Player Support I haven't yet seen a case where an account got hijacked because their password wasn't case sensitive.

Why is there no way to write a support ticket on the offical website?

Its a joke that people have to use social media to get a response from the jagex customer support.

There is and over 10,000 people send one in every month.

Find an article on the support centre and scroll all the way down. If it's an issue a player might need to contact us about, there will be a big yellow 'contact us' button.

As an example - if you're having connection issues, you can read our handy guides, and contact us if you need 1-2-1 help: https://support.runescape.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207344375-Common-Connection-Solutions-

how often do stakers get involved in RWT ? do you think something must be done regards scamming gp in duel arena will you remove it if that's what players want?

I don't have an exact % or number re: the first part of your Q, but the ICU team look at all aspects of the game (including the Duel Arena) in regards to RWT.

If a piece of content is purely being used as a vehicle to facilitate rule breaking, then it's of course something we would look at reviewing.

Would you ever consider unbanning permanent banned accounts?(I know it says permanent) For example I used to bot on osrs when it got released but my rs3 acc got banned. Any chance that could happen?

We don't have any plans to unban accounts where the account owner broke the rules. Sorry - but thanks for swinging by this evening!

Can we get an RSC reset please? All of the Crystal Chests are bugged. Its one player that is bugging them all.

RuneScape Classic is an unsupported game that we no longer update, which we haven't done for years - sorry. :(

When can we expect an option for an authenticator delay like the bank pin system?

Currently, there is a divide among players that want an immediate recovery and those who want 24+ hours.

Can we set up a choice of 24 hours, 3 days, and 7 days?

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/741pvl/we_are_mods_infinity_stevew_player_support/dnuvcvr/

Thanks!

[deleted]

We work to maintain a 24/7 game service but on very rare occasions we do experience some connection issues. There is a separate issue with some Old School servers which are being looked into.

If you do ever experience any issues - check out: https://support.runescape.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207344375-Common-Connection-Solutions- for help :)

Just wondering how long you sometimes spend on some accounts before banning them. I imagine lots of bot software has become extremely sophisticated, and so it becomes hard to decipher between actual players and bots.

And has this task become much more difficult over recent times? Thanks.

Honestly, it doesn't take us long at all to identify if an account has been cheating or not. Bot makers might promote their bots as sophisticated, but it really isn't!

How are you currently treating previously reasonable (1:1, mimicking mousekeys) AHK use on accounts? E.g. first offense 7 day ban, second 14, then a month, etc. and does it ever result in a permanent ban?

We don't disclose the exact punishments but AHK can and has resulted in permanent bans.

Hello, I relocated 50 miles out of town end of August. Are you able to tell the difference between someone who has relocated but still is original user vs. an actual offender who had someone else complete the Inferno for them? I'm afraid to attempt the mini game now, fearing that when I complete it, my account could get banned since I moved.

Yes - don't worry. If we have any doubt at all, we won't ban an account.

Where is the "summer" update text post about authenticator delay etc?

We delayed it to this week, and will post it out soon - but a lot of it can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/741pvl/we_are_mods_infinity_stevew_player_support/dnuvcvr/

Could you make it so when you search for something in the bank and then deposit an item inside the bank the search bar doesn't close?

Hey, thanks for joining us.

Not really a Player Support question but sounds sensible, so I'll pass it onto the dev team. :)