MMO dev says it's the "perfect time to grab a shower" after tearing servers down over economy-destroying potion dupe found in Old School RuneScape
Old School RuneScape faced another economy-compromising dupe bug this week following the release of new content on September 25. Players found a way to generate countless valuable potions from thin air, forcing developer Jagex to disable all trade, yank the MMO's servers offline, and ultimately roll them back to resolve related issues.
A loose timeline of events starts at 1:10am ET today, October 1, with a prominent Reddit post from user FactFetishist. "Potion storage has a dupe bug," the player declared. "Good job, Jagex." This bug was obviously discovered before this point, but this is the earliest public acknowledgment I can find.
FactFetishist shared a screenshot showing billions of gold worth of potions, including the newly released prayer regeneration potion, stored on one account which is notably a subtype of Ironman that can't trade with other players. (Another user who seemingly owns the pictured account later shared the same screenshot, but without usernames redacted, likely signing the whole group up for at least a temporary ban despite their pleas otherwise.)
While mega-wealthy OSRS players may well have thousands of premium potions lying around, a restricted Ironman realistically wouldn't be able to (or, really, wouldn't choose to) amass a stockpile like this the old-fashioned way, and certainly couldn't get so many new potions this quickly. Something was indeed up.
Two hours later, the official Jagex Support account confirmed that "all OSRS worlds are offline," adding that it is the "perfect time to grab a shower in the meantime." As OSRS YouTuber WildMudkip documented, this server shutdown was preceded by in-game limitations that disabled trading as well as alchemy spells that convert items into gold and even the ability to collect naturally spawning items. Somewhere at Jagex, a developer shattered a case reading "in case of emergency, break glass," grabbed a shotgun loaded with economy-saving measures, and started shooting from the hip.
This