UK games developer and publisher Jagex permanently banned 587 accounts for persistent abusive behaviour from RuneScape last year.
That's according to written evidence submitted by VP of growth and product services Neil McClarty (pictured) to the UK's Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee into immersive and addictive tech. Jagex says during 2018 it muted 43,815 accounts in the short-term due to "low level disruptive behaviour", while a further 11,383 received a longer-term mute and an official warning over their behaviour.
Of that figure, 7,626 didn't learn their lesson and were muted on a permanent basis. Just 587 accounts were banned for persistent abusive behaviour within Jagex's games.
The Cambridge-based games firm says it on average issues 23,000 offences against its users per day, bringing it up to a total of more than eight million offences per year.
"Regarding abusive behaviour, we have multiple options regarding how to deal with, or exclude, offending players from the games. These range from muting their chat, to a complete ban of an account to blocking an offenders’ IP preventing them from accessing our services in future," McClarty wrote.
"In 2018, 43,815 accounts received a short mute for low level disruptive behaviour, an additional 11,383 were given a longer mute and an official warning for behaviour likely to offend or upset others. Of those, 7,626 continued to be inappropriate, and were subsequently permanently muted. Specifically, with regard to permanent bans over the course of last year, while we welcome hundreds of thousands into the games on a daily basis, we only issued permanent bans against 587 accounts for persistent abusive behaviour."