Why I Believe Jagex Sells RuneScape Gold Themselves — And I’m Not Alone

For years, RuneScape players have whispered the same suspicion: that the biggest gold seller in Gielinor isn’t a Venezuelan farmer or a shady third‑party site — it’s Jagex themselves. One player bluntly declared, “Jagex owns bot farms and gold selling sites.” Another added, “I genuinely think Jagex is only allowed to ban so many bots per week/month. The amount of revenue they get from them is not insignificant.” These aren’t fringe takes — they’re mainstream community theories, and they’ve only grown louder as bots continue to flood the game despite endless “ban waves.” 

The case against Jagex from a player’s perspective

• Bots that never die: Despite ban waves, bots reappear in every world, every day. If truly stamped out, we’d see sustained relief; instead, we see a perpetual supply machine — the kind that looks more like infrastructure than pest control.
• Stable black‑market prices: If independent farms were routinely obliterated, prices should swing wildly. Players see relative stability and infer controlled supply — the kind a developer could maintain while keeping plausible deniability.
• Bonds as smokescreen: Bonds were sold as the RWT antidote, but they didn’t kill the black market; they normalized real‑money pathways alongside it. Many players view Bonds as the public-facing cover that makes private pipelines easier to hide.
• Selective enforcement optics: Community anecdotes often claim buyers get lighter, staged punishments while sellers get nuked. In a conspiracy framing, that looks like preserving demand while pruning competition.

Community voices: the suspicion isn’t fringe

“Jagex owns bot farms and gold selling sites.”

“I genuinely think Jagex is only allowed to ban so many bots per week/month. The amount of revenue they get from them is not insignificant.”

“World 420 people have talked about Jagex controlling the price of bonds and artificially moving the prices to create a controlled fiat currency.”

“They rarely enforce it though, along with banning goldfarmers and bot farms. They stopped caring when they got the big coin.”

These threads aren’t buried. They sit in high‑visibility community spaces, often with substantial upvotes, reinforcing that suspicion has matured into a kind of folk wisdom among players who feel the in‑game reality contradicts official messaging.

What Jagex says publicly

Jagex’s official stance is unequivocal: RWT is against the rules, harms the game by incentivizing botting and flooding markets with botted resources, and will result in confiscations and bans — even for first offenses under updated enforcement messaging. The company has explicitly framed recent actions as a harsher line against buyers to address demand, not just supply.

Players who buy gold report mixed enforcement experiences in community threads, from warnings to temporary suspensions to permanent bans, fueling debates over consistency and intent. The perceived gap between the lived experience of bots everywhere and official clampdowns is precisely where conspiracy narratives thrive.

Why a believer thinks Jagex would do it

• Revenue beyond memberships: Gold is a massive industry across MMOs. In a believer’s lens, no modern studio leaves such demand entirely to third parties.
• Economic control: By quietly shaping supply, a developer can moderate inflation, stabilize prices, and keep progression loops sticky without making overt changes that spook markets.
• Plausible deniability: Public ban waves against “independents” create the appearance of enforcement while a central, protected pipeline could continue out of sight.

The bigger picture: trust vs. reality

Whether this theory is ultimately true or not, the fact that so many players believe it points to a deeper rupture: trust is strained. When the everyday reality of crowded bot hotspots and resilient black‑markets conflicts with official posts about harsher enforcement, players default to the story that explains what they see — that the strongest, most consistent supplier must be the developer itself.

Conclusion

I believe Jagex is the biggest gold seller in RuneScape — and I’m not alone. Until bots meaningfully disappear and the black market truly collapses, the player suspicion will endure: the hand feeding Gielinor’s gold addiction isn’t outside the walls — it’s inside them.

That’s my take — but what about yours? Do you believe Jagex is secretly running the gold trade, or is this all just tinfoil‑hat talk? Share your thoughts in the comments below. The more voices we add, the clearer the picture of what players really believe.