So this game seems like its on pretty shaky grounds legally. Yes, it definitely helps that the developers are not making money off of it, but the base game is still Jagex property? are we going to face repercussions for playing this? Normally you can be prosecuted for playing unauthorized bootleg copes of games.
It’s not on shaky grounds… at least, not from an objective standpoint. Servers like this are why OSRS even exist today. There was a movement for the 2007 era after EoC came out, and jagex listened. Jagex tends to be quite supportive of their community overall in weird situations and this likely would be one of them simply due to the fact that it’s being spoken about via youtube and other platforms.
We’ve had (former) Mod Mat K play this on stream at one point, and while he no longer works for Jagex, someone like him usually wouldn’t advocate for something like this if he didn’t think his former company would support it in some fashion. At least, that’s my take.
No, you can’t be prosecuted for playing a private server - at worst, you always risk potentially losing progress, but given the longevity of this server already, I sincerely doubt it unless it’s planned.
This is false. You cannot be prosecuted for playing pirated games. If this was true, tens of millions of people would be in legal hot water which obviously isn’t the case.
At worst, only the person directly responsible for hosting the infringing content is at risk. Players and contributors are safe.
The Lost City server is a clean-room implementation and is in the clear, legally speaking. Nothing is being infringed upon there. The client was reverse-engineered, refactored, and ported.
Only the game cache and assets are used as-is. Yes, Jagex retains the sole copyright on the assets themselves, but a few factors work in our favor:
- We are open source and not-for-profit, everything you see is freely available and for educational purposes only. We do not accept money, it is impossible to pay for anything!
- Jagex does not host this version of their software anymore, early RS2 could be considered “abandonware”. This doesn’t mean that Jagex couldn’t exercise their rights, merely that it’s less likely.
- It would be highly unlikely for any potential customers to mistake Lost City for RuneScape or Old School RuneScape. It is therefore unlikely that Jagex would be seen as incurring any revenue loss due to Lost City’s existence.
Another interesting anecdote is that Jagex has yet to take action against any open-source server emulators. There’s nothing inherently special about open-source servers that prevents this, it’s merely an interesting coincidence.
We (meaning you and I) are at no legal risk whatsoever. Our game progress is always safe too. You can export your player’s save file from the live game at any time using the security centre: Login | 2004Scape
Since the server is open-source, you can download and run it on your own computer, and import your save data.
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