In 2006, RuneScape released a Construction skill that added player-owned houses and accidentally enabled one of the most famous PvP exploits in MMO history: the Fallador Massacre, which saw unlucky merchants killed in safe zones for their valuables after players worked out a way to obtain glitched PvP status.
On November 19, 2025, Old School RuneScape released a Sailing skill that added player-owned boats and accidentally enabled piracy, which is nowhere near as bad as the massacre, but the game's new fleet of pirates is carrying the PvP flame in their hearts.
A breathless PSA from Reddit user Pshaw97 – and this is, certainly, nothing to pshaw at – brought this issue to my attention, and developer Jagex has already confirmed it's real.
"Players can board your boat while you're at any dock and go through your cargo hold, and take anything for themselves," Pshaw97 explained. "Every dock is infested with people boat hopping trying to steal anything from cargos, I hopped onto the subreddit to see who else was complaining and saw nothing about it so thought I'd warn everyone. Jagex, this needs to be patched ASAP or at least made so that by default only friends can hop on your boat at docks."
"Lmao, piracy as emergent gameplay is honestly perfect for Sailing," replies bloodsplat99.
"BANK YOUR ITEMS," pleads dieslboy93, echoing calls from the Fallador Massacre. I can still see the colored text.
"Close enough, welcome back Durial321," adds The_Goose (the goose, wow), referring to the kingpin of the massacre.
In a blog post, Jagex says, "Whilst we appreciate the thematics of piracy, it's not immediately obvious to players that these settings control access to your boat similar to a Player-Owned House." So, this unintended piracy will be blocked with a "short-term" solution: access to a boat's cargo hold will be limited to whoever owns that boat. Get user IDed, pirates.
Next week, Jagex will open the cargo holds back up. Access will still default to off, but you'll be able to open your cargo hold to others, like people on your friends list, by adjusting your online status (friends, private, etc.). I don't see why you would need to do this, but it's fun that you can.
"We'll explore how we can adjust settings for the Cargo Hold so that you can [have] more choices with how you want to share items, e.g friends-only, clan-only, etc. in the longer term," Jagex adds.
The reported losses from this easily missed backdoor plundering seem minor compared to the Fallador Massacre, but you've really got to respect the tenacity of OSRS players. A full 19 years later, they still found a way to use a new skill – the first released in over a decade – to steal stuff.
