Third Party Client Update

05/17/2018

Discussions about third party clients, specifically RuneLite, have been ongoing overnight. In this statement we'd like to address some of the speculation and concerns of our players.During a pre-arranged meeting with the RuneLite developer we outlined our concerns with the nature of the client and asked for its immediate closure without the need to escalate any legal action against a dedicated Old School player. We did this because we believe RuneLite was and is infringing Jagex’s IP rights and damaging the game which goes against our commitment to our community to maintain the integrity of the game. Specifically, the sharing of tools used to deobfuscate Old School RuneScape code, and then re-publishing said code.Whilst this may seem heavy handed, if ignored it's entirely plausible that this code could make its way into the hands of developers seeking to adapt it to create botting scripts, or developers who would implement game-breaking features. We cannot allow for botting to become an even easier pursuit with our code in opensource, without our permission.We understand that for many of our players, RuneLite was an increasingly valuable utility whilst playing Old School, we are sorry for the impact this will have on your play but this needs to be done for the long-term health of Old School RuneScape. We'd like to reiterate that we will not be banning any players specifically for using third party clients. The conversation with RuneLite is part of the long-term strategy and approach for all 3rd party clients and the future of our own official client.Lastly we'd like to reinforce the fact that any personal attacks against individual Jagex members of staff are entirely unacceptable. This is a decision taken at a Studio level, and does not stem from any one member of staff. The wellbeing of our staff is paramount, and subsequent action will be taken against any offenders.Thank you for your patience, discussions with 3rd party client developers are still ongoing, but rest assured that we'll share more with the community as soon as we're able to.UPDATE 23:30 16th May 2018We’ve been in touch with the developer of RuneLite, Adam. Whilst discussions and our investigations continue we are temporarily holding off legal action. Adam has agreed to make the RuneLite client and obfuscation tool closed source and pause development during this time.We will continue to review the Jagex approach to third party clients, taking onboard community feedback. This may take some time, and we will let you, the community, know updates as we can share them.
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