Old School Runescape players claim record 16 billion gold bounty after PvP stakeout 600 days in the making

gamesradar.com:

A group of Old School Runescape players successfully tracked down a famous content creator in the game's PvP mode to kill him and claim the biggest bounty in the history of the game: a staggering 16 billion gold pieces.

Westham (opens in new tab), the player who actually landed the final blow, recently uploaded a video covering the plot to kill C Engineer (opens in new tab), one of the best-known YouTubers in the Old School Runescape community. C Engineer also uploaded his own video (opens in new tab) chronicling the death from his perspective, and both are well worth a watch. 

There's some essential background here. For the past 600 days or so, C Engineer has been playing Old School Runescape on a Hardcore Iron Man account. Iron Men cannot trade or interact with other players, meaning they have to acquire all of their items and supplies themselves. Hardcore Iron Men start the game with a special icon tied to their one life. If they die, they lose their Hardcore status and become regular Iron Men. Your account isn't deleted or anything, but many players – especially content creators – treat dying on a Hardcore as the end of the road, so this mode dramatically raises the stakes of the game. 

To ratchet things up further, C Engineer has exclusively been playing his Hardcore Iron Man in Old School Runescape's PvP worlds. Ordinarily, players can only fight each other in designated Wilderness zones or special arenas, but as the name implies, PvP worlds basically turn the whole game world into one giant Wilderness where you can be attacked anywhere. On top of that, he put a bounty on his own head. Fans of C Engineer's YouTube series would regularly donate gold to his main account in order to drive the bounty higher, upping the