Glitch
A glitch (also known as a bug) is a fault in a program that causes it to function improperly. The severity of glitches can vary.
In rare cases, a major glitch might cause Jagex to do a complete shutdown of the game making all worlds offline, followed by banning the players who abused such a glitch or rolling back the game state to a previous point.
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Jagex view on glitches[edit | edit source]
Prior to 24 April 2018, Jagex upheld a strict policy of no items returned that were lost from glitches; however, after the World 347 Glitch, they "restored" items lost from the glitch with the form of bonds (as well as restoring experience). Untradeables were not returned.
On 7 June 2018, Jagex stated that they previously set a precedent with the handling of the World 347 Glitch and aimed to restore players' accounts when losing items or experience to glitches if Jagex were completely to blame.[1]
Rules on bug abuse[edit | edit source]
Abuse of glitches is a direct breach of the "bug abuse" rule as stated under Rule 4 of the rules of RuneScape. The punishment for guilty parties varies depending on the particular glitch and the degree to which it was abused. Minor graphical glitches generally go unpunished while major abuse may result in a permanent ban.
Jagex has recommended that players who discover glitches in RuneScape should report it to Jagex immediately either in-game or via the "Submit a Bug Report" option on the RuneScape website.
It should be noted that some non-gamebreaking glitches that have been deemed acceptable by the community such as prayer flicking and tick eating are not bannable.
Noteworthy glitches[edit | edit source]
World 347 glitch[edit | edit source]
After switching servers for scheduled maintenance on 24 April 2018, the world 347 was given Deadman Mode status without forcing players to log out first. This resulted in players losing items and stat reductions, as well as accounts with game-breaking attributes.
Theatre of Blood glitch[edit | edit source]
Upon release of the Theatre of Blood, there was a glitch where the player holding the Dawnbringer who died would drop another item in their inventory, while the game was meant to drop the Dawnbringer.[2] In one instance, the player was an ironman whose Armadyl chestplate was picked up by their teammate, and as they could not trade it back, Jagex offered to swap the item to its owner.[3]
Coin pouch glitch[edit | edit source]
On 12 July 2018, a game update added coin pouches to Old School RuneScape. A short time after the update, a major bug was discovered where stackable items would convert to a max cash stack (2,147,483,647) on death.[4] The game was taken offline and was rolled back to a previous state.[5]
Twisted bow glitch[edit | edit source]
After an update on 28 February 2019, a spawn for the twisted bow was added outside of the Farming Guild accidentally. A hotfix was deployed 32 minutes after the game update, causing the bow to be deleted when players pick it up.[6] Despite originally not intending to rollback the game,[7] Jagex decided to do so at 13:56, two hours after the update.[8] At 15:30, the rollback had finished and the game was made online.[9] A post on the Old School RuneScape website was made to inform players of the rollback's progress.
Server crash glitch[edit | edit source]
On 26 November 2019, an Old School RuneScape content creator disclosed information about a glitch which allowed players to duplicate items including coins by abusing server save states and crashes.[10]