Game Integrity updates

Game Integrity Updates or balancing changes are unpolled permanent changes to Old School RuneScape that are introduced to the game in order to combat rule-breaking or change elements of gameplay that are considered unfair or counterproductive to the game's long-term health. Apart from holiday events, bug fixes, and minor quality of life changes, game integrity updates are the only updates not voted on by players and cannot be vetoed by the community. However, they are sometimes announced ahead of time by Jagex to take community feedback on effective ways to combat the problem without impacting the game negatively for legitimate players.

Often, these unpolled updates were either perceived by the development team to be unlikely to pass a community poll or had already failed one. For example, the anti-dragon shield being gated behind the start of Dragon Slayer failed a poll before being introduced as a game integrity update.

Examples of Game Integrity Updates

 * Splashing was significantly reduced in effectiveness as an AFK training method when an unannounced update on 10 September 2015 required players to interact with their client every few minutes to stay logged on, even while in combat.
 * The Ranged Strength of javelins were reduced due to it being too powerful when paired with the heavy ballista and ranged Void Knight equipment.
 * The drop table of Zulrah was majorly altered twice due to its profitability being too high.
 * Dropping items manually in the Wilderness makes it instantly visible to other players (excluding food and potions).
 * Vorkath's combat stats and mechanics were altered.
 * Adamant and rune dragons no longer drop superior dragon bones.
 * The coin pouch was introduced as an unpolled update to pickpocketing, in order to reduce the effectiveness of autoclicking.
 * The use of a box trap now requires partial completion of Eagles' Peak, as chinchompas are frequently botted. In the same update, the quest was modified slightly to allow skill pures to complete it without gaining combat experience.
 * A second floor was added to the Chaos Temple next to Goblin Village that spawns Wine of Zamorak; to access this floor, players must have either a set of Zamorak robes or Zamorak vestments equipped as well as total level of 500 or higher.
 * A tax was added to Duel Arena winnings in order to remove excess gold from the game, items cannot be staked and the stakes must be almost equal to combat real world trading, and several countermeasures have been added to prevent scamming.
 * In order to counter the falling price of Bird nests, on 22 November 2018 modified the drop tables of Vorkath, Zulrah, and Callisto by removing their crushed nest drops. Bird houses also saw their yield nerfed.
 * The overhealing effect of Anglerfish was disabled in the Wilderness, on PvP Worlds and on Bounty Hunter worlds to combat griefing.
 * Purchasing battlestaves from Zaff now requires partial completion of What Lies Below, in order to make it more difficult for bots to mass buy battlestaves.
 * The Chambers of Xeric were rebalanced with several unpolled updates in January 2019.