QUOTE
No secret to keeping finger on the pulse
By Mike Scialom
JAGEX Software has always been resolutely low key about its corporate profile - no mean feat for a firm which employs 450 people on the science and business parks and would be quite justified in beating the drum about its £32m turnover (with a handy £14.5m profit).
A recent visitor to the firm's premises described the studio as "like a scene from a Bond movie", such is the secrecy and security.
But last month incoming chief executive Mark Gerhard took the trouble to explain how the Jagex shroud exists only because it serves a very useful purpose - as the firm running the world's largest-ever massively multi-player role-playing game (MMORPG), it is constantly patrolling its borders to ensure the integrity of the gaming world it has created remains accessible only to genuine enthusiasts.
"We face so many security issues it makes the banking and petro-chemical industries look benign," Gerhard says. "We've built our own web servers - we want security through obscurity. We're proud of our achievements. The only reason for any secrecy - there is a sense of paranoia - is that there are thousands of nasty people out there. We look after the safety of our players and ensure it's a fair, safe game for all."
Gerhard, 32, one of the young chief executives even for the computer zone, said Runescape had had security issues in the past. This is hardly surprising given the online gamesphere has six million active accounts and one million paid-up subscribers, and requires 160 servers in more than a dozen countries from Mexico to New Zealand.
In the most well-recorded incident, 300,000 accounts were banned a couple of years ago. "If you started a Runescape account today (Tuesday, 24 February)," Gerhard explains, "you would have to play 400,000 hours to get to the maximum skills level - that's one and a half years' playing time. People who wanted to fast-track were paying organisations to level up the account or they were buying a high-level account - you get situations where someone in China is playing for 16 hours a day.
"You also attract a certain criminal element and it's ongoing, we found out credit card fraud was being carried out by the same people selling levelling-up accounts, and this made them visible. The majority are really organised. The bit we tackled is synchronised trading, by and large from the Far East. These are professionals trying to reverse-engineer into the system, they probe our servers, and we have a team defending our proprietary systems - we have to be protective.
"We've just about put a stop to it," Gerhard says of the practices which saw characters with advanced skills selling for a pretty penny on eBay. "Although you find once you evolve, so do they. We've even had letters from syndicates complaining we're putting them out of business."
But it's not unusual for gaming firms to be secretive about what they're up to. With game development taking two years and costing up to £10m, the last thing you need is for information to leak out before the title hits the shelves.
Jagex's founder, Andrew Gower (a Cambridge graduate), and his brother Paul are well known for wanting to be left alone to get on with their creative roles. "Andrew doesn't actively seek publicity, but we work very closely together - he's just across the room hacking away at a laptop."
Gerhard's blue-chip security credentials are even more impeccable than outgoing ceo Geoff Iddison's, who was European ceo of PayPal before he took over as head of Jagex.
Although he had been cto for only a year, Gerhard's background in the City and in the development of security architecture for the national lotteries in Ireland, the UK and the US with G Tech, place him at the forefront of the anti-fraud systems sector.
But that's not to say he isn't interested in bringing new products to market. "We have new MMORPG games on the way aimed at an older audience. The games are what makes Jagex special. It's an awesome company with great staff and we just had the most successful two quarters in our history."
Jagex has more reach into the online gaming sector than any of its rivals. With Gerhard at the helm "putting massive emphasis on leveraging our technology", the firm's success story is likely to sprint and sprint.
By Mike Scialom
JAGEX Software has always been resolutely low key about its corporate profile - no mean feat for a firm which employs 450 people on the science and business parks and would be quite justified in beating the drum about its £32m turnover (with a handy £14.5m profit).
A recent visitor to the firm's premises described the studio as "like a scene from a Bond movie", such is the secrecy and security.
But last month incoming chief executive Mark Gerhard took the trouble to explain how the Jagex shroud exists only because it serves a very useful purpose - as the firm running the world's largest-ever massively multi-player role-playing game (MMORPG), it is constantly patrolling its borders to ensure the integrity of the gaming world it has created remains accessible only to genuine enthusiasts.
"We face so many security issues it makes the banking and petro-chemical industries look benign," Gerhard says. "We've built our own web servers - we want security through obscurity. We're proud of our achievements. The only reason for any secrecy - there is a sense of paranoia - is that there are thousands of nasty people out there. We look after the safety of our players and ensure it's a fair, safe game for all."
Gerhard, 32, one of the young chief executives even for the computer zone, said Runescape had had security issues in the past. This is hardly surprising given the online gamesphere has six million active accounts and one million paid-up subscribers, and requires 160 servers in more than a dozen countries from Mexico to New Zealand.
In the most well-recorded incident, 300,000 accounts were banned a couple of years ago. "If you started a Runescape account today (Tuesday, 24 February)," Gerhard explains, "you would have to play 400,000 hours to get to the maximum skills level - that's one and a half years' playing time. People who wanted to fast-track were paying organisations to level up the account or they were buying a high-level account - you get situations where someone in China is playing for 16 hours a day.
"You also attract a certain criminal element and it's ongoing, we found out credit card fraud was being carried out by the same people selling levelling-up accounts, and this made them visible. The majority are really organised. The bit we tackled is synchronised trading, by and large from the Far East. These are professionals trying to reverse-engineer into the system, they probe our servers, and we have a team defending our proprietary systems - we have to be protective.
"We've just about put a stop to it," Gerhard says of the practices which saw characters with advanced skills selling for a pretty penny on eBay. "Although you find once you evolve, so do they. We've even had letters from syndicates complaining we're putting them out of business."
But it's not unusual for gaming firms to be secretive about what they're up to. With game development taking two years and costing up to £10m, the last thing you need is for information to leak out before the title hits the shelves.
Jagex's founder, Andrew Gower (a Cambridge graduate), and his brother Paul are well known for wanting to be left alone to get on with their creative roles. "Andrew doesn't actively seek publicity, but we work very closely together - he's just across the room hacking away at a laptop."
Gerhard's blue-chip security credentials are even more impeccable than outgoing ceo Geoff Iddison's, who was European ceo of PayPal before he took over as head of Jagex.
Although he had been cto for only a year, Gerhard's background in the City and in the development of security architecture for the national lotteries in Ireland, the UK and the US with G Tech, place him at the forefront of the anti-fraud systems sector.
But that's not to say he isn't interested in bringing new products to market. "We have new MMORPG games on the way aimed at an older audience. The games are what makes Jagex special. It's an awesome company with great staff and we just had the most successful two quarters in our history."
Jagex has more reach into the online gaming sector than any of its rivals. With Gerhard at the helm "putting massive emphasis on leveraging our technology", the firm's success story is likely to sprint and sprint.
I assume he means 200 million xp in each skill, because it only takes about 6,000 hours to get everything to 99 (from what I've heard).
