Old School RuneScape is banning Deathmatching next week, As part of their effort to fight real world trading and to promote fairer play.
After August 15th, Deathmatching is a violation of the Games of Chance rule. The team announced the new rule, penalties for violating it, and how they came about making this decision. This decision stems from work that they did starting a couple of years ago to help make things fairer and to continue battling RMTs.
They may have closed and replaced the Duel Arena to combat cheating, but activities like Deathmatching sprung up to take up the slack. The team knows cheaters might just come up with another plan, but according to the announcement, they're also beefing up some of their other security measures.
When Deathmatching, the point is to create high stakes PvP battles linked to real world trading practices. Players will essentially bet all their loot and money dropped on a fight, creating high-stakes battles. Other rules during the match could include using standard equipment and agreeing to not use any healing. Upon a win, you might make out with a lot of goods, but this destabilizes genuine, fair PVP.
It also gives people incentives to purchase accounts or to create accounts just to facilitate these matches. So now, they're fighting back since the team has determined this is still happening frequently.
In late 2022, they clarified that practices like “community chucking” and placing stakes or dueling via a middleman as a process of real-world trading were not allowed. Deathmatching is one part that is still going on and that is why they felt they needed to address it.
If you are caught after August 15th, your first offense will get you a 3-day ban and wealth removal, but do it again and you’re subject to a permanent ban.
