After teleporting in the wrong world on Old School Runescape, a streamer lost $15,000 worth of in-game gold and completely freaked out in front of his family. Although, there is speculation that the entire scenario was staged.
As with any MMORPG, players in Old School Runescape spend countless hours grinding and making money to buy all the best items in the game.
However, unlike a lot of titles in the same genre, Runescape has specific areas and worlds where if a player is killed with their gold, all of it is dropped to the ground.
These PvP locations are incredibly dangerous and avoided by the majority of players when they’re not prepared for a fight.
Unfortunately, one Runescape streamer made the mistake of logging into a PvP world which resulted in him being killed for over 30 billion gold.
Runescape streamer loses 30 billion gold, but was it fake?
On August 26, VoldemartLive was streaming Old School Runescape to his viewers and interacting with his chat while his family sat in the background.
Not realizing he was in a PvP world and with 30 billion gold in his inventory, the streamer teleported to the Duel Arena and was immediately attacked by another player. Unable to escape, VoldemartLive began to panic and even asked his viewers to come and save him.
Unfortunately, it was too late for anyone to intervene and he was takedown by the opposing player. It was at this point that VoldemartLive began to shout and freak out about what had just happened in front of his wife and child.
Smashing his headset and hitting his chair, it was obvious it had just set in that he’d lost $15,000 worth of in-game gold.
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Despite this, after the clip was posted to the LivestreamFail subreddit, not everyone was convinced by the streamer’s reaction and there’s a lot of speculation that the entire scenario was staged to ‘real-world trade’. Although it’s against the in-game rules, Old School Runescape gold can be exchanged for IRL money through third-party websites.
With the value of 30 billion gold roughly being around $15,000, some players think this death on stream was a way of covering up the transfer. They argue that by dying to another player, it’s impossible to claim that the trade was deliberate.
However, others disagree, claiming that performing the transfer on stream wouldn’t make sense as it would just draw attention to the act.
Not only that, they argue VoldemartLive instantly attempts to teleport, and that accidentally holding that much gold while going to the Duel Arena is plausible.
We’ll never know for sure whether the clip was staged or just a simple mistake on stream, but it’s certainly created a divide within the Old School Runescape community.
Even if the money was real-world traded, it would be difficult to Jagex to track it back to VoldemartLive, as he could always argue that he’d just been killed by another player.
Either way, this is just a reminder for all Runescape players to constantly check the world they’re currently in, or it could cost you everything you own in-game.