Squeal of Fortune/Controversies



On 2 April 2012, Jagex added the ability to buy Squeal of Fortune spins with real money. This caused several controversies. Some players were enraged by this new update and started a riot in Falador, World 66. Mod William posted a thread on the forums about this new update on the Recent Game Updates article, and within a day this resulted in thousands of negative posts by furious players demanding its removal.

Real world trading
Many players view the ability to buy spins as a form of real world trading, because the spins have the potential to give very valuable and desirable rewards, or hundreds of thousands of experience points. Jagex mods, such as Mod Moltare in Mod Mark's friends chat, have stated that buying wheel spins is different from buying gold or items from a third party, because the gold or items are not the third party's to sell but a first party's, Jagex, which differs from the valid legal principal of selling whatever interest one has in an item (even if it is no interest), thus the buying of gold is legal, but violates game rules and is cause for banning.

They claim that buying spins is not a form of RWT. Many players, however, disagree, saying that overall negative effect on the game is still the same, and cite Jagex's own policies regarding real world trading. Since the sale of spins violated Jagex's own rules on real world trading, on 5th April, 2012, Jagex changed their explanation for the rule against real world trading to make room for selling spins and other future content.

Player reactions
Despite RuneScape 's long history of fighting against real world traders, some players believe that RuneScape may soon become insolvent as Jagex is seemingly rewriting their previous rules.

Within the first week of spin-selling, over fifteen thousand players voiced their objections to the "Wheel-World Trading", and the "Steal Your Fortune" on the update thread or one of the hundreds of other ones. To put this number in perspective, most update threads receive only two to three thousand posts, most of which are positive or ambivalent. The fifteen thousand replies to the spin update are as good as entirely negative, with only one positive post in the first twenty pages. After one week of consistent player objections, Jagex locked the forum in which these objections were voiced, but opened a special Squeal of Fortune feedback thread later on.

Adding to the controvery was the Gambling and Games of Chance offense, which is seen as even more hypocritical on Jagex's part as they allow only their form of gambling while banning others.

Financial security
If a member is paying by credit card, and the credit card information has been saved with Jagex, there originally was no identity verification between clicking the in-game "buy spins" button and confirming the transaction. This means that someone with unauthorised access to a RuneScape account could turn up to $200/day of the rightful owner's money into Squeal spins. Since there is no option to disable spin purchasing on an account, it is also possible for children whose parents pay for their RuneScape membership to spend their parents' money on Squeal spins without their knowledge. These issues have provoked accusations that Jagex is violating laws concerning customer data protection. Jagex has replied with reminders to keep your RuneScape login information secure.

Additionally, they changed their Terms and Conditions, effective 2nd April, 2012 to avoid lawsuits by adding a line in the Subscription section:

It should be noted that anybody whose account existed before the Terms were updated were not alerted of this change. However, in the Terms and Conditions it states Jagex does not need to do this, and users are responsible to check for changes:

In any case, if Squeal spins are bought by an unauthorised third party, the issuing bank of the debit or credit card, and other payment providers such as PayPal, have facilites available to reverse charges for disputed transactions. As of a patch note update, however, the security around buying spins has been "tightened".

Gambling
As RuneScape contains no age verification (just asking if the user is at least 13 on signup), it is possible for children under the age of 18 to spend real money on the Squeal of Fortune.

Jagex has stated that since every spin on the Squeal wins an in-game item (even if only cabbage or fishing bait), and since there is no potential for real monetary return, the act of purchasing spins is not truly gambling. Many players maintain that such a low-value spin is functionally equivalent to a loss, and that a purchased Squeal spin therefore counts as gambling. Other players maintain that a loss is incurred when spins are purchased, and that with the hope for a rare item, the Squeal of Fortune becomes a form of lottery. Overall, the Squeal of Fortune is more qualified as a Big Six Wheel.

If a low-value spin is considered a loss, or if Squeal of Fortune is considered a lottery, then the act of selling spins would violate online gambling laws, and the act of selling spins without age verification would violate age restrictions on gambling in several countries.

Precedent
Many players have been concerned by the precedent that this sets for the future of RuneScape. These players maintain that once Jagex makes an update connected with selling items or experience for real world money, they will be more inclined in the future to make updates connected with real world trading, despite having promised in the past that microtransactions would never be added to RuneScape.

The former official Jagex policy on real world trading is as follows:

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape."

Jagex response
On August 14, 2012, Mod Timo responded by giving this quote about the controversy surrounding the SoF and Solomon features: 

Two weeks after Mod Timo replied to players on the forums about SoF and Solomon's Store, Mod MMG posted his response about the two features of the game in a news post on the homepage: On the forums related to this post, Mod Michelle used Mod MMG's quote rather than him addressing his own post: The forums had a mixed response on the message as well as some players wondering why Mod Michelle was using Mod MMG's quote. Along with speaking about the two features, he also spoke of another bot-nuke day appearing within the upcoming months as well as an update through graphics with HTML 5. Some players accused the message as being a way for Jagex to gain the trust back from the players who despise the two features while others praised it as being a great way to eradicate bots from the game as well as to improve it graphically.

On April 5, 2013, after the Samid's Glove SOF update, people on the forums were outraged enough that Mod Lods started to try to calm them down and answer questions. The most controversial quote about SOF was said in response to a player named LordCromwell. After arguing that Runescape has become a Pay-To-Win game and that working for what you want is how the game was meant to be, Mod Lods had this to say:

"I'm sure you feel far more satisfaction from actually taking the time and effort in game to achieve things like this LordCromwell, this is just an alternative option for players" - Mod Lods

This caused an uproar among others and showed to some that this quote confirmed that SOF was in the game to allow players who bought spins to have an advantage within the game among others. After this was said, all quotes from Mod Lods afterwards was almost entirely targeted to positive feedback and questions.