Arteta v Alonso, part one: a desire for control and the theory behind…

First reported by Dexerto, former Jagex employee Andrew "Mod Jed" Lakeman has been sentenced to three years in prison (suspended for two years) for using dev tools to remove items from player accounts, then selling them online. An investigation found that Lakeman had earned more than $400,000 through this activity.

Former OSRS developer Mat K elaborated on some of the saga in a 2021 episode of OSRS Podcasts. Lakeman was a content developer for OSRS hired in 2015, and he used other Jagex employee's credentials to manipulate the game's appeals system for moderation and account recovery to swipe items and gold from players' inventories.

It's unclear when Lakeman began stealing from players, but according to Dexerto, Jagex realized this was foul play and not a glitch in 2018, and set a trap for the digital bandit: The company bolstered OSRS' security measures without informing most of the dev team. Lakeman was caught out, fired from Jagex, and reported to the police, who arrested him in 2019.

"Just because it’s virtual, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t face the full force of the law," said Detective Constable Andrew McKeane in a statement for the Cambridge Constabulary. "Given the rapid growth of online and virtual worlds, the justice system is going to have to keep pace and adapt to these new and emerging crimes."

Back in 2022, Lakeman actually scored a minor procedural victory through an unfair dismissal counter-complaint, but his financial reward was significantly reduced, and he was unable to secure a requested reinstatement at Jagex. Earlier this year, we reported on presiding judge Lord Justice Popplewell's ruling that Lakeman could be sued for theft over digital assets like RuneScape gold, precipitating this sentencing.

This grim saga aside, things have been going pretty great for Jagex and Old School Runescape. The company held its biggest live event to date with the Deadman All Stars esports tournament in Chicago this June, and OSRS is bigger now than OG RuneScape ever was.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens at this year's Gamescom, Saber Interactive CCO Tim Willits admitted the studio's leadership had a reputation for saying precisely what it means—"sometimes we 'say what we mean' too much," he laughed. But when asked if recent controversies would change the studio's comms approach, he said "no."

"I've been in the industry for so long, and there's always some dust up," Willits explained. "People got mad at Saber because we put World War Z on Epic, and people were like, 'oh, Saber's destroying the industry.' Now 30 million people have played World War Z. And the games will speak for themselves, even in our experiment with Rideshare [Stimulator]."

If you haven't been keeping up with the latest drama Saber Interactive has courted, here's the skinny: former Saber Interactive writer Stella Sacco claimed she was fired and replaced with AI during the development of Rideshare Stimulator.

Saber's comms department initially put out a fairly benign statement disputing the details of the claim, but CEO Matt Karch subsequently issued a statement to This Week In Videogames that was both aggressively pro-AI, and personally insulting to Sacco.

Karch apologized privately to Sacco before releasing a statement reflecting on the incident which itself contained a targeted barb for a different games industry writer that has since been edited.

All that might sound like an avalanche of unforced errors on Saber's part, but Willits said Rideshare Stimulator will speak for itself regardless of any concerns about AI and Sacco's treatment. "I encourage people to check it out when it comes out, play it themselves," Willits said. "They may be like 'oh, this is cool! I like this,' you know. And if they don't like it, fine.

"We are going to stick to making the best games we can. Try to show them, give people an opportunity to play them, and have players make their own decisions because players are smart, you know. You make a good game, they'll find it and play it."