Old School RuneScape developer Jagex was forced to make a hardline stance against cryptocurrency-driven market manipulation after the MMO’s economy faced peculiar investments and scarcities driven by, of all things, a meme coin gauged against RuneScape items.
In a blog post, Jagex observes, “Recently, we’ve seen cryptocurrencies and meme coins appear that track, trade against, or otherwise attempt to tie themselves to the price or volume of items in our games. We want to be clear about where we stand.”
Jagex stands firmly on the grave of meme coins, laying out a “a zero-tolerance approach” to cryptocurrency and market manipulation.
Because this practice sees real money “influence our economies and people are incentivised to act with the intention of real financial gain,” Jagex writes, it’s classified as real-world trading, which is banned in RuneScape and has seen increasing crackdown after OSRS tech and rule changes.
“Whether a given activity constitutes malicious market manipulation is at Jagex’s sole discretion,” the post adds. “Actions that have unintended consequences for the economy may also result in action against your account, the severity of which will be proportionate to the suspected intent of the user(s).”
This mess kicked up a few days ago after some crypto traders hatched the idea of hoarding OSRS’ Robin Hood Hats, a fairly rare piece of headwear only obtainable from scavenger hunt-like clue scrolls.
The idea, it seems, was to stoke publicity and a market narrative, or at least a shell convincing enough to attract buyers to the coin and accrue trading fees. It’s not far removed from common prediction market grifts. OSRS, which looks to be at its peak and has drawn quite some attention in the MMO space, simply provided a visible, searchable theater for the performance, and a fairly malleable open market.
As a post from Robinhood Alpha, shilling the now-radioactive coin, puts it: “The strategy uses its treasury to accumulate hats, reduce the available floating supply and build an onchain narrative around a real in-game economy.”
In the past nine days, the in-game price of Robin Hood Hats has surged from 730,000 to about 1.1 million gold pieces (GP) in OSRS – not an all-time high, but a huge spike to the highest price seen in at least six months. However, the volume of hats traded went to the moon after this scheme broke: from an August peak of 1,158 in a day to a monstrous 5,744 in September, with multiple recent days tripling previous volumes.
A “Robin Hood Hat Strategy” account that was seemingly in on the coin boasts of collecting over 9,000 hats all for themselves, and now laments having nothing to do with the hats. “Not the easiest decision, but in line with recent events, it is now virtually impossible to truly collect hats, which was ultimately the goal from the start,” says the apparent trader.
Normal OSRS players flagged this crypto manipulation from the get-go, and are unsurprisingly celebrating the death of the meme coin. “Jagex just owned the crypto bros and I’m here for it,” says one user on a hot Reddit post.