UK-based developer Jagex held its Runefest convention event last weekend, which included the final of Deadman – but all did not go well.

In fact, it’s been six days since the tournament came to a close and the games firm isn’t sure who actually picked up the $20,000 prize pot.

The competition began in July, with the 2,000 players signing up; this figure was narrowed down to 200, with these users being divided up evenly across four islands. But seven of the players on the red island decided to form an alliance, refusing to fight one another. This resulted in their disqualification; something Jagex regrets.

In a statement, the firm says that the players were warned repeatedly, but and that they could probably have dealt with the situation a different way.

“The initial reaction to distributing survivors across four Islands was very positive, and it’s clear that we’re moving in the right direction. The red island was warned repeatedly, and we reached out many, many times to them. Whilst we did appropriately warn players that failure to fight would result in disqualification, it ultimately did mean that we had to make a tough decision ‘in the moment’,” the company wrote.

“In hindsight perhaps we could’ve opted to take a random member of the team through to the final area, but we stand by the decision we made.”

That’s not where the problems end either; the actual last survivor of the tournament has since been disqualified for cheating.

“A standard subsequent investigation into the winner of the tournament took place and the winner was responsible for the creation of a bot farm,” Jagex wrote.

“Naturally all accounts linked to this botting activity have now been banned. This then raises the question of what to do with the prize money. At the moment we’re discussing what to do with it. A few ideas we have at the moment are another charitable donation, dispersing the money among the finalists, or carrying it over to the next season (or a combination of all of these).”

Fortunately, Jagex claims that it is going to learn from what took place last weekend.

“Going forwards we’ll be utilising a number of the points raised in today’s retrospective,” it says in its statement.

“We’ll continue to discuss how best we can change the mechanics of the final, with a view to implementing the changes as early as possible and with a potential beta playthrough. We’re investigating what engine work is required to avoid the issues with eating food when in an area with a large number of players. We’ll be working closely with Player Support’s ICU team to produce an extensive guide to protecting your IP address and avoiding individual DDoS attacks, as well as increasing the amount of resource required to tackle issues such as botting, muling, and boxing. Holding the event at RuneFest was a great occasion, particularly for those attending in person, but on reflection we’re better served if the Deadman final is an event in its own right and we aren’t confined to the schedule of a larger event.”