Game designers wanted to ban so-called real world trading, but they grappled to find a mechanism to stop it. “What we realised is that we had to stop unequal trading in the game; where suddenly somebody would turn up with a million gold,” Mr Jele says, and so the company introduced a range of restrictions, for which the launch of a “stock market” was crucial. Now only people can trade items of similar value - and for the moment, real world trading is in abeyance. The price of a million gold shot up to $20 to $25 - and the clean-up cost RuneScape 60,000 subscribers.