Bug

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. Most glitches are merely annoying and don't benefit players. In rare cases, however, 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.

Glitches can be reported directly to Jagex by right-clicking the Report button and selecting "Report game bug". This in-game bug report form also contains a listing of known issues to prevent duplicate reports.

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 provided compensation for items that were lost due to the glitch in the form of bonds, and also restored the experience that was lost. Untradeable items, including pets, 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]

Abuse of glitches is a direct breach of the "exploiting a bug" rule as stated in 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.

Some long-present glitches have been deemed acceptable by the community, such as prayer flicking and tick manipulation, and are not bannable.

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.

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.^[2] The game was taken offline and was rolled back to a previous state.^[3]

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.^[4] Despite originally not intending to rollback the game,^[5] Jagex decided to do so at 13:56, two hours after the update.^[6] At 15:30, the rollback had finished and the game was made online.^[7] A post on the Old School RuneScape website was made to inform players of the rollback's progress.

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.^[8]

On 4 June 2020, with the release of Sins of the Father, a problem occurred with player save states, resulting in a rollback of the game servers.^[9][10]

On 9 December 2021, with the release of the Grand Exchange Tax and Item Sink, a game engine change had an adverse effect where players were able to perform certain actions much quicker than normal.^[11] Within an hour the game was taken offline to rectify the issue.^[12]

On 19 January 2022 with the release of Shattered Relics League, there were problems with player profiles. Some players lost their Ironman Mode status upon logging back into the main game after logging into a Shattered Relics world, among other things. Jagex turned the game offline around three hours after the update to perform a rollback.^[13][14]

On 23 March 2022 with the release of Guardians of the Rift, there were issues when dropping untradeable items. Regardless of where they were dropped, they instantly appeared for other players, enabling them to pick them up. Jagex turned the game offline about an hour after the update to perform a rollback.^[15][16]

After scheduled maintenance took place on 27 February 2024 and the servers were brought back online, an issue was identified with player display names. Players were able to change their display name and create new characters to have display names already in use by other players. Jagex took the game and some other systems (including the ability to change display names)^[17] offline, and worked on reverting the name changes back to their state at 9:30AM GMT.^[18]

On 1 October 2024, it was discovered that it was possible to duplicate potions via usage of potion storage and the chugging barrel. Shortly after the discovery, Jagex took the game offline.^[19] In the 15 minutes before the servers were offline, players could not pick up items off the ground, resulting in lost items and a server rollback at 9:45AM GMT to restore said items. The servers were reinstated at 01:00PM GMT with all lost items restored and the bug patched.^[20]