Old School Runescape players smuggle gold into Fresh Start Worlds, immediately get banned everywhere

Old School Runescape players caught smuggling gold into Fresh Start Worlds have been banned.

Though developer Jagex stopped short of revealing how many players were guilty of the exploit, it did say that the "small handful of accounts" that had been identified "have been permanently banned".

"We've identified and resolved a bug that allowed players to transfer wealth into Fresh Start worlds," Jagex explained in a statement shared across the game's social media channels.

"A small handful of accounts have been highlighted as being involved in this."

"As a result of the abuse, any accounts they owned have been permanently banned," Jagex added. "We've also done our best to remove any additional wealth that was added as a result of this."

Whilst most respondents were delighted to see the news, not all players were happy with the announcement.

"After reassuring the community that swapping wealth from the main game to FSW (or vice versa) was not bannable, yous give out permabans?" queried one. "I'm curious now, what's the difference between wealth and GP? No way yous banned for a bug when 90% of the community relies on bugs."

Interestingly, they include a screenshot which allegedly confirmed that Jagex "would like to clarify that swapping "GP from the main game to Fresh Start Worlds (or vice versa) will not be a bannable offence", although it goes on to add "however, this is risky so we don't advise doing it". 

As other players have said, the issue here is about legitimate trades versus smuggling rather than the amounts involved. 

A group of Old School Runescape players recently tracked down a famous content creator in the game's PvP mode to kill him and claim the biggest bounty in the history of the game: a staggering 16 billion gold pieces.

The player who actually landed the final blow, Westham, recently uploaded a video covering the plot to kill C Engineer, one of the best-known YouTubers in the Old School Runescape community. C Engineer also uploaded his own video chronicling the death from his perspective. 

Runescape recently launched Fresh Start Worlds that hit the reset button on the whole game – and updated them after pay-to-win controversy.