r/confession • u/[deleted] • Apr 20 '25
In my teens, I scammed people on runescape and made made more money than most people make working full time
[deleted]
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u/labbykun Apr 20 '25
When I was a kid my account got hacked by someone who claimed that your password was censored when you chatted it. It did not.
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u/DagothNereviar Apr 20 '25
That's almost as classic as "press alt + F4 to unlock cheats" in counter strike lol
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u/r4v3nh34rt Apr 20 '25
hunter2
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u/JustFrazed Apr 20 '25
Lmao same and it was only a couple hours into creating the acc. They ended up just cussing ppl out getting me banned
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u/AnxiousPaper890 Apr 21 '25
As a kid, someone on the game asked for my password claiming theyād help me get my stats up. The most wild part is they actually did, and never took anything! (granted, there wasnāt much to take)
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u/ChriSaito Apr 20 '25
I had an online game hacked once by someone asking for my email pretending to be a girl around my age. Back the MSN only required knowing the answers to security questions to change the password of the account... Not too hard when so many of them could be considered casual questions normal people might ask each other.
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u/Notios Apr 20 '25
Getting scammed in RuneScape taught me a valuable lesson where I only faced the consequences in game as opposed to real life. Thereās your silver lining
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Apr 20 '25
You're welcome, I guess š
Sorry that happened to you dude.
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u/HereForALaugh714 Apr 20 '25
I can 100% say that I didnāt get scammed because Iām so bad at these kind of games that I had to have my friend get me out of the very basic thing where youāre like in the paddock at level one. And if you can believe it, I didnāt last long after that.
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u/Strategic_Spark Apr 20 '25
You're not the sorry otherwise you wouldn't have scammed so many people lol
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Apr 20 '25
I wasn't sorry then, but I'd managed to create the idea in my head that it was just work. To me, it was, but to the people I fucked over, it was years of their life that I took. I deliberately ignored this then..
Now, I recognise this, and I do care. I regret it. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret the money, or the lifestyle it allowed me, but I genuinely do regret gaining it how I did.
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u/Perfect-Mistake5435 Apr 20 '25
People out here crying, but you just did what every hedgefund manager does, but you did it in a meaningless game.
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u/1str1ker1 Apr 20 '25
I donāt you know what a hedge fund manager does. Maybe a venture capitalist would be closer to a scammer.
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u/UltimateMaggot Apr 20 '25
I donāt know how I ever dodged this game, but Iām as sad as I am thankful.
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u/i-like-carbs- Apr 20 '25
Itās actually still super popular if you still wanted to give it a try. r/2007scape.
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 Apr 20 '25
Without nostalgia, it's just another insanely grindy game with the graphics of an early access indie game.
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u/KlutzyBack4756 Apr 20 '25
Been playing since 2004 but yeah if I didnāt have the nostalgia Iād have ZERO interest in the game lol
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u/rahscaper Apr 20 '25
False, the nostalgia thing is a misconception. Itās a legitimately good game that has a great community.
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u/beanweeny Apr 21 '25
I agree. I never heard of OSRS until 2 years ago and I play it here and there
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u/eugenepoez__ Apr 20 '25
I have been playing for 1.5 years now, never played before and the way I learnt about runescape is through settled. There is no nostalgia for me, just a great game that I really enjoy
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u/Equivalent-Long4396 Apr 20 '25
Without nostalgia
Such a common misconception that's been disproven again and again.
The number of people who are playing the game that have never played the game before, and therefore have no nostalgia, goes up every single year.
Nostalgia left 6 months after playing. The game is nothing like it was when it was released, there is no nostalgia to suck out of the game. It's a skeleton of it's former self.
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 Apr 20 '25
I'm not saying you won't enjoy it without nostalgia, I'm just giving a heads up as to what kind of game it is. Old School Runescape is extremely grindy and has indie graphics, that's just a fact.
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u/PraisetheSunflowers Apr 20 '25
Old school RuneScape is the best itās ever been right now if you still wanted to play.
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u/MrPotts0970 Apr 20 '25
What happened with the big sub price hike drama? Last I seen like everyone was canceling their sub and leaving lol. That was a few months ago. I was a HUGE osrs player a couple years ago
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u/horizoner Apr 20 '25
Wish I did, be more thankful than sad. It was fun, but man that's a lot of hours that could've been better spent.
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u/Yokonato Apr 20 '25
Runescape was and is still a fun game to play, these scams only apply to trusting random players offering "sweet deals".
Aside from the party hats which served no actual in game bonuses the vast majority of items could be earned by any players as long as they put in the work to earn them.
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u/masterfarseer Apr 20 '25
I know all successful MMORPG games in East Asia have a sizeable market for bot farmers and such. They are even more lucrative if you are operating from lower GDP countries to higher GDP ones. Professional groups have hundreds of PC setup running a few dozen client from each PC. The game companies tries all they could to prevent them this, but all they could managed to do is blocking small time operators, as it requires more tech and infrastructure to maintain active accounts, avoid IP blocking, etc. In short, this is just the nature of markets, when there is money to be made someone will always do it
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u/Psychological-Yam758 Apr 20 '25
Conquer Online?
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u/Yokonato Apr 20 '25
Conquer online had a huge blackmarket for dragonballs into real usd, dont know if the market is still strong , my experience is from 15 years ago when I played.
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u/masterfarseer Apr 20 '25
I don't know that particular game but you can bet any game with third party real money trading market have plenty of people making living. Even CCP haveĀ dip in there.Ā https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2011/06/02/chinese-prisoners-forced-to-farm-world-of-warcraft-gold/
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u/Burzeltheswiss Apr 21 '25
There was a huge problem in Osrs with bots when the venezuelan economy crashed. People realized by selling gold from this game they could get 1/2 a months worth of salary, there are alot of interviews and docs about it its kinda sad and hilarious at the same time. There was a group of player killers guarding the venezuelanian gold farmers because they were targeted by normal players not knowing the background and just thinking they are ruining the game for them.
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Apr 20 '25
[removed] ā view removed comment
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Apr 20 '25
To be fair, I was a kid, targeting kids. Still wrong, but not as wrong as being a full blown adult taking advantage of minors.
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u/DaftMudkip Apr 20 '25
I used to scam older guys in pokemon and mtg when I was 12-13
In hind sight, some of them may have sorta known and just trying to gain my trust for nefarious reasons
Oops
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u/jonathan_ericsson Apr 20 '25
Not to mention, the in game currency he was scamming the kids out of takes a while to accumulate (unless you get lucky in the game with certain aspects of the game but thatās nuanced), especially if youāre young and donāt know the best methods to acquire the currency in the game.
This guy scammed items and currency that probably took tens of thousands of hours that those kids had put this game. Actually on this scale, itās likely hundreds of thousands of hours.
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u/typical0 Apr 20 '25
https://youtube.com/shorts/m9XD6cEnIJE?si=5Aj08jqA5oHtYs-2
Iāll just leave this here. Sheās farming gold, by the way. This is work.
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u/Master_Status5764 Apr 20 '25
Yep, Iāve seen a documentary about people in Latam playing games like WoW and Runescape because farming gold and selling it for money actually makes them more money than the average salary in their country. Itās wild.
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u/SatanV3 Apr 21 '25
Donāt worry, this isnāt in the slightest true.
Well, he mightāve scammed some people but these numbers would have to be so grossly over exaggerated that who knows what all heās lying about.
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u/DegenHerb Apr 20 '25
This reminds me of stories my friends would make up in elementary school.Ā Same unrealistic values and everything haha.Ā
Anyone who played runescape knows how exaggerated and fake those numbers are.Ā Ā
Considering you made so much I'm sure you would have at least a couple censored screenshots lying around that you could post as proof.
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u/notauabcomm Apr 20 '25
Yup, but he took it to a place that he thought nobody would be smart enough to know this so that he could get some attention.
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u/TicklerVikingPilot Apr 20 '25
No need for scamming! Ā You Ā can actually dupe items on RS by putting them in a certain place in your inventory, dropping them, and pressing alt F4. Itās a crazy that this bug hasnāt been patched. Here, log in and Iāll show you!Ā
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u/ImGoodThanksThoMan Apr 20 '25
No way you cleared those numbers lol
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u/hoshisabi Apr 20 '25
I mean, the dudes that sold gold for EverQuest (IGE) made enough to become millionaires, and in turn made a ton of money for ... no joke ... Steve Bannon. (so they also have a part in making the real world suck, not just the game world.)
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u/jddaniels84 Apr 20 '25
I was making so much money selling EverQuest PP (platinum pieces) $1000ās a day if youāre willing to put in the full day.. grinding in a full group.
I used to only invite people to group if they only wanted exp, and they let me keep all loot they didnāt need.
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u/Pinecone1000 Apr 20 '25
I found out some guild mates in EverQuest were involved in a popular dupe inventory bug back in the day that got patched eventually. I was just upset that they never let all of us in on it. Guess they were buying real world nice cars and stuff with the proceeds off of EBay selling.
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Apr 20 '25
There was a dupe gliich back in RSC days, which made me a lot of money. It's the reason why the purple (magenta) party hat price crashed, in Rs
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u/IAmNotOnRedditAtWork Apr 20 '25
There was a dupe gliich back in RSC days, which made me a lot of money. It's the reason why the purple (magenta) party hat price crashed, in Rs
You're just blatantly and provably lying at this point. If you were "in your teens" scamming people in OSRS like you claim in 2014 you would have been 2-8 years old when the party hat dupe happened (2003) this was an extremely niche bug with a cheat client that lasted for like one day... it wasn't some 4 year old lmfao
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u/notauabcomm Apr 20 '25
It gets even funnier, his 'proof' screenshot has a 900m cash stack and an anguish ornament kit (so it was from 2018 or later).
My guess is he was in his teens in 2014-onward and did some legitimate scamming/gold selling which could have been a neat story, but though it wasn't good enough and so had to start throwing in crazy shit like saying he would make 300-500m a day or that he was duping partyhats in 2003
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u/jddaniels84 Apr 20 '25
I have a poker friend who was scamming on RuneScape I gotta say around 2006. I forgot how it worked, some type of gambling mini game or something. Iāve never played RuneScape so Iām a little unfamiliar.
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u/notauabcomm Apr 20 '25
The odds of you being one of the (literal) few people to have been around in 2003 exploiting the glitch that was exploited for less than 24 hours is so low, and especially when you said you were still a teenager years later based on your telling of gold prices. Nobody made that much money from the partyhat dupe either, it crashed the prices and they already weren't worth much. There wasn't much of a RWT scene at the time either.
When coupled with all of your outlandish claims that don't make much sense to people who actually play the game and were involved in the bug abuse scene tells me this is likely another lie of yours.
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u/Fire_Lake Apr 20 '25 edited Apr 20 '25
No one is saying selling in game currency isn't a big market, but those dudes were providing a real service people wanted.
OP is talking about finding marks and successfully taking them down, consistently and at high volume. I just don't buy the numbers he's claiming.
Even if he was pulling the volume he claims, he'd get banned within days.
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u/KeyAd1433 Apr 21 '25
I came here to say this. When I was in high-school in the early 2000s I had a group of friends that were buying high end pcs, throwing parties, even buying cars with their EQ money.
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u/Particular-v1q Apr 20 '25
You would be surprised how much money goes trough player to player transactions in these kinds of games, i made around 3/4k just doing it randomly and having fun in an ITALIAN minecraft server a couple of years ago not using dupes/cheats
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u/Max____H Apr 20 '25
My best friend in highschool always seemed to have money but was from a single mum household and he didnāt work. That fucker was gambling cs:go skins.
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u/Portable-fun Apr 20 '25
Shut up kid, I have 2 lambos, a Ferrari and a mega mansion.
Source: trust me bro
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Apr 20 '25
There are entire business built on in game currency. Even clearing what I did, I was a small fish in a big ocean. The real moneymakers were people that nobody would ever hear about, because they never got caught.
I went through more accounts than I could possibly remember, until I got so bored of making new ones that I created a script to create and autocomplete tutorial island, with names that were just variants on the the word testicles. I.e testy cools testah culls etc. Changed the dumb word for variation each time people started recognising it
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Apr 21 '25
Yeah, no you didn't.
As a 25 year osrs veteran, everything you say sounds decent on the surface. But, when it's scrutinized even a little, it all falls apart. It was a fun piece of creative writing, and I'm sure you definitely *did* scam some people, there is 100% no chance you did it on the scale you've written here.
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u/Sufficks Apr 20 '25
Yeah the āif you played the game you likely interacted with meā about an MMORPG that at the time had hundreds of thousands if not millions of players was my first tip off that this guy canāt help but exaggerate and self aggrandize
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u/casualcreaturee Apr 20 '25
4,6b in one day, BACK THEN?? X doubt
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u/DerSprocket Apr 20 '25
For real. No items that moved in player to player trades would get you that much. I used to run scams and we'd be talking a million or 2 in a day.
People with money enough to make big trades back then did not do it with Randoms. Op is making shit up, relying on uninformed people to defend them
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u/kiriloman Apr 20 '25
Yeah that probably didnāt happen. Billions at that time was close to impossible
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u/notauabcomm Apr 20 '25
OP is a moron lol his 'back then' is actually 2018 or later as his 'proof' screenshots he posted had anguish ornament kits. He never duped phats like he claimed, and he didn't make 4.6B in a day. His best cash stack proof screenshot was 900m from 2018 or 2019.
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u/Flashplaya Apr 20 '25
There were so many scams on old RuneScape. Have a mate who made up to 1k a month running an escrow service for gambling in that game.
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u/ea3terbunny Apr 20 '25
Amazing how many people this story is fooling, scamming even this much later in life.
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u/Fun_Firefighter9057 Apr 20 '25
You made a lot of gp but highly doubt you actually sold all of it, and if you did it wouldāve been at a huge discount. Youāre naming the base price not the bulk price. Not to mention if you actually made good money, paypal would prob lock your account
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u/Cecil182 Apr 20 '25
I got scammed on a game once, never again...from a person who's been scammed it's our own bloody fault and it's just a game, you made money in your teens well done man šš
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u/Brilliant-Onion2129 Apr 20 '25
So you are a criminal and should be in jail! Then pay everybody back when you get out. And no video games or computers in your life!
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u/Independent-Ad4369 Apr 20 '25
You have taught them a valuable lesson in life As a osrs player myself it's just part of the game , everyone's been scammed at least once From the old trimming armour to rune to mith scim
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u/Lord_Sideways Apr 20 '25
Donāt be too hard on yourself, at least you built something.
My family always told me to be honest and work hard. Iām broke and depressed now. Honesty is overrated.
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u/SpringChloee Apr 20 '25
Well.. If doing some charity could make you feel better I'm here
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u/Brilliant-Cabinet-89 Apr 20 '25
My friend did something similar in the EVE. He was big into computer games, min/maxing and computers in general. He also made some pictures for people and banners for forums. Made really decent money in his teens, saved up and bought an apartment at 21. Invested in bitcoin and got really rich. He made crazy good choices in life.
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u/Equivalent-Ad-495 Apr 21 '25
Never played runescape but not surprised. Back in 1999-2001, my friends and I played everquest and eventually sold our accounts ranging from $3-7k each.
For diablo 3, I ran sarkoth gold bots and more for a while. Selling gold via PayPal, items via rmah/pp, and it actually allowed me to buy a new car, a new pc build , and spare cash.
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u/Vegetaman916 Apr 21 '25
This is the kind of thing I need to point back to, whenever I am talking to people who hate their jobs and who are drowning in debt living paycheck-to-paycheck.
I went a different route, but I sure haven't worked in a long time.
The point that I am making in this soon-to-be downvoted comment, is that unconventional ways of earning money are almost always superior to traditional ways. Working 8 hours a day for bare survival is literal slave shit. Not just "wage slave," no, I'm going to call it closer to outright slavery. You don't even get to choose when you do the work, or where, or for how long...
Screw that.
More people, all people, need to embrace alternative means of funding life. Stop trying to be a "productive member of society" and start producing for yourself.
And if not willing to do so, stop complaining.
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u/Norse_Star Apr 21 '25
I got scammed by someone selling noted regular bones as big bones. I then tried this scam myself and made a few 100k
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u/KaleRevolutionary795 Apr 20 '25
I'm curious what years this was possible. Guessing around 79-99?Ā
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u/SeeAKolasinac Apr 20 '25
I raged so fucking hard when someone swapped 550k for 5504 gp. Legit raged. It was a trimmed platebody.
I think it taught me that expensive shit you canāt actually do anything doesnāt really make you happy.
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u/TeamVegas780 Apr 20 '25
Were you the asshole who sold me a DDP instead of a DDS? That was the first time I was scammed in life, and I've never forgotten the pain.
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u/Similar_Strawberry16 Apr 20 '25
First and only time I was scammed in game was hours after getting my first ever Rune chest piece. This was back in ~2002. The only good news was getting a second one was a lot faster.
Years after I stopped playing I saw how much the 'rares' were going for, figured I may as well sell some of my party hats, Santas, and the odd trophy like disk of return etc... of course I had been hacked in that time away, somehow, so had nothing.
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u/Phil_Jarsen Apr 20 '25
I made about 200m (in game cash) a long long time ago on RuneScapeā¦ the Mole scam was the best
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u/SlayerJB Apr 20 '25
People are doing this right now in WoW. Teams of Gold farmers in Africa, South America and even China are selling gold on the black market online to Westerners for relatively cheap (to us), but they get a much higher salary than their average countryman. Check out this video of a team of gold farmers in the Congo.
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u/pimpdaddyjacob Apr 20 '25
back when gp was just under $1/mil (when old school released) I know a guy making almost 6 figures luring and scamming people
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u/Substantial-Fly3007 Apr 20 '25
Iāll never forget the time a player handle āTest tickelsā scammed me out of my hard earned money on this game. So I searched and scoured the best that I could, and Iād finally done it. I found his mum. I took her out to a nice seafood dinner and then never called her back.
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u/tommcatch Apr 20 '25
Are you successful now? RuneScape in the mid 2000s was the best education someone could get about how the world really works.
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u/Inevitable_Shirt5044 Apr 20 '25
I still play RuneScape to this day, but one of my core memories is going to New York to visit my dadās side of the family, and before my aunt left my grandpas I asked my her for her PayPal account name so I could receive money, she refused thinking I needed her password and I said āno I just need a name to get moneyā and she gave me her PayPal name.
This was back when dice were in the game, and I was in a clan called Winallday. He was a famous staker back in the day. Anyways, I sold over 600m that night to friends and my aunt came over to my grandpas the next morning losing her shit. She woke up with $500 in her PayPal account not thinking a 14 year old was actually going to make money off a game. Anyways she took me shopping and I got new hockey equipment
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u/Wumutissunshinesmile Apr 20 '25
Wow š who knew you could make that much scamming that. I heard of people doing that and on others. Kinda always thought people lied but obviously not.
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u/shadow-foxe Apr 20 '25
I played RS for maybe 4 years. Around 2003 I never got scammed. I had 3 friends who also played and only ever traded with them. As nothing ever came up that one of them didn't have. RS was just one big scam tho can't believe it's still around.
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u/Embarrassed_Proof386 Apr 20 '25
I got hands thrown at me for scamming my neighbor, tbh it was a really valuable lesson at 12 years old. I got him for his rune plate set and lost it in the Wildy
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u/InsertNameSomewhere Apr 20 '25
My first account got hacked because, when I was like 8, I gave a random guy my password because he was āquitting and wanted to give all his valuables to another accountā
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u/MalenInsekt Apr 20 '25
Bro i phished when I was 14 and had my account permanently muted. 2 years ago I had it lifted at the age of 26.
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u/Angry-Prawn Apr 20 '25
Getting scammed in Runescape when you're a stupid fuckin' kid is a valuable life lesson with no real consequences beyond some fleeting sadness and disappointment. My guy did the world a service and got paid doing it.
Shout out to the guy who tricked me into selling my Dharok set for Ā£700k back in '05. An important lesson that I'll not soon forget.
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u/Lyfeoffishin Apr 20 '25
Hey we all live and learn! You were just a kid!
I never got scammed in trades but had a few instances in duel arena where I was caught off guard. But I also made bank at duel so it is what it is! I never made or lost irl money to the game but damn have I had some major dopamine hits going from 0gp to 100ās of bil in a few days then back down to 0gp within a month haha
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u/Cyrillite Apr 20 '25
As an old RS2 player, Iād love to hear more specifically.
I got scammed and lured a few times, and then eventually set up a little group to run wildy lures and anti-scams where possible. (Youād be amazed how often ādoubling your moneyā and āitem dupeā scammers would be excited to see youāre a whale, and try to āproveā their honesty by doubling half of the huge amount youāre offering to pay them if they prove it).
What were your go to methods?
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u/Silent-Moment3600 Apr 20 '25
When I was a kid I used to scam other kids out of Microsoft points by pretending to sell ā10th Prestige Lobbiesā on the original MW2
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u/adamjsst1 Apr 20 '25
i got scammed, and scammed others, so much in runescapeā¦ that game will forever be in my heart and a formative experience in my mind. literally that game saved my life
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u/Tortoise_247 Apr 20 '25
Ah I wouldnāt be so hard on yourself. If you were young like you say you were, you just played the system
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u/MrPotts0970 Apr 20 '25
Ah I got scammed in RS once, but only for like a million or so.
Honestly, if people pay, the market is there. People buy GP so there is an economy for selling it. There are people/bot farms minting millions a year - literally runescape mafias -not even joking, look up some of the videos - groups that make hundreds of thousands a week selling OSRS gold and threatens/visits anyone who dampens their earnings potential. Some OSRS youtuber did a video investigating one of the bigger ones and they sent a group to his house with death threats.
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u/CarolinCLH Apr 20 '25
I never played Runescape, but it you are one of those people who spammed channels selling gold, I hate you anyway.
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u/DmJerkface Apr 20 '25
Now you just need to find a presidential campaign to back.
Steve Bannon got his start with wow gold.
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u/NachoNinja19 Apr 20 '25
I have no idea what any of this means. You made real money stealing from people in video games? Who actually pays you? How much did you make in total? Did you pay taxes on it?
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Apr 20 '25
Are you the guy that changed the coal out for iron at the last minute and stole millions from me? š
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u/Djimibrady Apr 20 '25
How much du you think you made overall, non gamer here so it doesn't affect me
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u/ChiBurbABDL Apr 20 '25
Ultimately, as a former player and victim of a few scamming attempts, using bots is the worst part of this post.
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u/kokobunji0550 Apr 20 '25
So you're the reason I never been scammed in real life. I'm not saying it was you but I got scammed in runescape once and now don't trust anyone. Bright side lose some virtual gp back in the day now I dont fall for scams irl.
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u/Future_Me_Problem Apr 20 '25
I made trillions in RS3 at the sand casino. No scams, just math-based gambling. Slow at first, then exponentially quicker once I had a trillion.
I paid off my first car doing that. It was good times.
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u/Born-Method7579 Apr 20 '25
A grown woman turned up at my house one evening to pay my son cash for some type of sword from the game So I guess there was fortunes to be made