MMO scholar puts a $500 bounty on old versions of RuneScape as part of a community archive project: "You might have ALL of the game's lost versions!"

I'm sure many of you, like myself, who are pushing (or just past the line) 30 have fond memories of coming home after school, fighting with your sibling to get on that big chunky PC in the front room so you could log in to play RuneScape and farm ores long into the night. Not me; I was playing Habbo Hotel instead (and I was the younger brother losing the fights). But those fond memories people have of when I did play RuneScape – with my edgy Anakin Skywalker username since Revenge of the Sith had just come out – led to Jagex releasing 'Old School RuneScape' back in 2013.

However, Old School RuneScape itself has grown into its own beast, with additions that weren't present in the golden days being added. However, even though RuneScape first arrived back in 2001, the Old School version is based on the August 2007 build of RuneScape, and members of the community want to go even deeper. Fans of the game have launched the RuneScape Archive Project in order to preserve every version of the game from 2001 until 2012, which have otherwise been lost to time. And to show how dedicated, the team has put a $500 bounty on old versions.

In a post on Reddit, RuneScape Archive Project member Hlwys let players know that, as it turns out, old versions of RuneScape were downloaded to players' computers and hidden on their hard drives. So in theory, someone could be sitting on literally every version of the game and not even know it. In the same post, they announced that the team is offering $500 to anyone who can find a version of the game from 2001-2004 (or $250 for an incomplete version). In a spreadsheet shared by the team, it's shown that later years are far more complete (with 2009 having a 90% preservation rate), but the earlier years of the game's life need a lot more work (with the late 2003/early 2004 section only being 5.88% complete).

So if you played a ton of RuneScape and happen to have an old computer from 20 years ago hanging about, or even just the hard drive, you could possibly be in the money and help preserve a classic MMO in the process.

Speaking of classic RPGs, did you know you can grab Chrono Trigger for $4 on Steam right now?