The inside info behind Jagex’s decision to ban most third-party clients that you must know.
On June 17th, 2022, Jagex announced that starting on the 24th of the same month, any player using any third-party client other than the three safe-listed ones will receive a two-week ban. This is linked with the new launcher Jagex will soon impose on their player base.
This means they will only allow us to use a limited number of clients to keep playing our beloved Old School RuneScape. And they don’t plan to expand the list either. If you want to keep questing, skilling, bossing, PKing, or earning OSRS Gold, you’ll need to switch to one of the approved clients.
Partly, this is so that Jagex has more control and partly to keep the game fair for everyone. In the end, it wouldn’t be fair if using a particular client would help you save some OSRS GP from fewer deaths while trying to learn the Woox Walking at Vorkath.
Jagex Banning Third-Party Clients Wasn’t Surprising
Jagex had previously discussed how the new client (the official Jagex launcher) aims to prevent bots through its advanced bot detection systems. Bots can farm OSRS Gold illegally, and taking the necessary steps to remove or prevent them is part of what keeps the game fair.
This mainly affects the RWT business and how much OSRS GP gets transferred and then used as a means to buy Old School RuneScape membership. Hence, banning third-party clients was a predictable move on Jagex’s part.
Good News: Runelite is Still Here to Stay
Had it not been for the extended popularity of the allowed clients, Runelite would have likely also ended up on Jagex’s blacklist. But, as we all know, Jagex won’t take such substantial unilateral decisions because they risk losing many players.
Instead, they understand the importance of high approval from the community. Therefore, they decided to include the most loved third-party client for OSRS, Runelite, within the official Jagex launcher.
Why is Jagex Banning Most of the Third-Party Clients?
Two inherent problems come with many third-party clients: game integrity/fairness and data security. While some of these third-party clients aimed to circumvent the game and create unfair advantages for their users, other clients even experienced colossal data breaches that exposed the credentials of many players, leaving them vulnerable to hacking.
There are three big categories of unwanted behavior Jagex is trying to prevent by limiting the third-party clients to RuneLite, HDOS, and OSbuddy:
- Players skilling faster or with less effort.
- Players receiving combat aid from third-party clients that give them an unfair advantage in PvM and PvP scenarios.
- Ill-intended behavior directed towards other players like scamming or luring.
Jagex is even trying to compile a comprehensive list of features that are a no-go, but that’s an arduous task. The list is open and might stay open as long as Old School RuneScape exists.
Banned Features
Third-party clients won’t be able to tell you where projectiles land, so if you’re planning on killing drakes without fire protection, you will face an extra challenge.
If you want something automatic to count their attacks for you so you know when to dodge that fierce fireball, you’ll face another disappointment, as attack counters are also a banned feature. You won’t be able to receive any aid in attack prediction either. And we all have to admit that that is something that would make Jad a piece of cake.
You’ll also be on your own when it comes to prayer switching, so you better really learn how the mechanics of the boss you’re fighting look. The only way you’ll be able to have guidance on where to stand or not stand is through tile indicators, as any other features meant to help you out with this are also banned.
If you’re a skiller than a PvMer, menu entries that cause actions to be sent to the server are banned, with a significant emphasis on entries that affect Construction, Blackjacking, and Attack. Third-party clients won’t be able to modify the interface if that means that stuff that’s supposed to be hidden would get revealed or if it affects the click zones for most of the UI.
For PvMers, they want to limit the help a player can get from the client they’re using. And rightfully so, since PvM is one of the main ways to acquire OSRS GP, the success rate should be directly linked with the players’ skills and level of focus.
Let’s remember that Old School RuneScape is the game in which we deal with three massive interconnected scales: the activity’s intensity, the activity’s profitability (or the amount of potential OSRS Gold you can get or lose performing that activity), and the experience per hour.
While for most of the PvM’s activities, the XP per hour is pretty similar, the fight mechanics and the ones that distinguish the PvM activities are crucially different. The intensity from the specific mechanics can vary from AFK like the Kraken to intense like Zulrah.
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