How to block runescape on my wifi?

VPN
1

Sorry if this doesn’t belong here. I tried the 2007 subreddit but I got downvoted within ~10 seconds of posting so I don’t expect much help there. I’m desperate.

My sister is hopelessly addicted to osrs. She struggles with holding down a job because her life revolves around this game, which makes her depressed and causes her to use this game as an escape. It’s a vicious cycle. She’s already going to therapy and taking antidepressants but it’s been years and nothing’s going to change without drastic measures at this point.

My parents have asked me to find a way to stop her from playing so I’m wondering how I can go about doing this. I blocked outbound service to ports 43594 and 43595 (which I believe is used for both runescape and osrs) with the router but osrs is still running no problem. I have no idea why this is.

She plays using runelite and I’m using sky broadband if that has any relevance.

Absolutely any suggestions would be appreciated. Watching this spiral is honestly really upsetting and I hope this serves as a PSA that you shouldn’t let leisure take priority over your career/studies. :confused:

I know I might look like the bad guy to some of you but the alternative is that my parents kick her out of the house. :frowning:

Tldr: I blocked ports 43594 and 43595 on my (sky) router yet osrs/runescape is still accessible.

Edit: Thanks for all the help guys. I see a few people are worried about her using mobile data. That isn’t an issue because we have terrible coverage at our house. If I find a way to block it, I’ll schedule it so that she can play for a reasonable amount of time.

Edit2: She’s an adult.

Edit3: Conclusion

I’m gonna sit down with my sister and have a conversation about why she plays so much osrs, where she wants to be in life, how to get there, etc. Someone mentioned gaming addicts anonymous, which I will check out with her.

I’m going to strongly recommend that she cut down on her hours (particularly to avoid osrs eating into sleep time) and ask if she wants me to put a time limit on her PC to help with this.

If she refuses to interact and improve then I’m going to have to take a step back and let her face the consequences. It may well be a necessary shock to the system at that point, though I really hope it doesn’t come to this.

I might come back and edit this after I talk to her.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and criticism, and to those of you going through your own struggles, I wish you good luck from the bottom of my heart.

Also how the hell did half the subreddit see this post?

2

Add the website/client to a blacklist. Really don’t matter what you do. Addicts still gonna find a way. Back when EOC came out and people wanted to play old school they were putting private servers on flash drives.

3

I can’t help provide the solution you want but I would recommend making a post on r/Healthygamergg it’s a mental health subreddit focused on gamers based on the Youtube channel, people might be able to provide you with advice there.

4

Getting blocked is honestly one of the best ways to learn how to circumvent being blocked. If you block RS at the router level by blocking the domain/IPs if she has mobile data she can use her phone’s tether off the WiFi to circumvent the block quite trivially since data won’t be going through the router but rather her phone. As long as her phone is on data and not wifi she will be able to connect no matter what blocks you place on the router.

If she isn’t particularly tech savvy and you have access to the computer she plays on - I’d recommend editing the HOSTS file to point all world-xx.runescape.com domains to localhost. The computer will always use the HOSTS file prior to a DNS lookup which will ensure she still can’t connect by bypassing the router. But if she’s smart enough to look there this block won’t really help. Although this is only really an option if it is a family/shared computer which I feel isn’t as common as it used to be.

5

I agree with the firewall blacklist idea but and I am no medical professional but I’m 99% cutting her off completely would be a very bad idea for her health. It would be better to help her have a healthy relationship with the game instead of just a straight cut off.

6

Taking things away isn’t always the answer. It’s an addiction. You can take it away, but it’s for nothing if she doesn’t put in the effort to quit. The problem is still there, and she’ll only grow to resent your family. Point is the best thing you can do is pull her away yourself instead of saying we don’t want you to play, we want to spend time with you and help your sister work on herself. Should she quit? Yes, but she needs to come to that conclusion herself. Unfortunately, as a last resort, tough love is sometimes required.

7

Ngl, checked your profile to look at the shit you were getting on osrs and immediately regretted my decision :rofl:

8

I don’t like prying but don’t you think it’ll cause more issues if you take something away that your sister views as an escape?

You’ve got the right intentions, obviously you love your sister as do your parents but sometimes just talking to her as a family group could during a sit down dinner could reveal more than taking something away.

9

This seems like not the way to go about it.

10

The game is not the problem. She has unhealthy habits and ways of coping with her emotions. Taking it away means nothing, there are ways around it and there are alternatives. There are other games, ways to avoid her emotions and life.

She needs different therapy, the drive to improve, to educate on how to recover, and time. She needs to slowly pull away from the game by choice. You can’t force people to recover from these disorders.

If you really want to help, have the hard talks about what she wants from life, and make a plan on how to get there.

I’m speaking on this as someone who has recovered from anxiety/depression. All recovery is, is a change to the relationship to these emotions.

11

Probably not a good idea. This happened to me and I ended up being worse.

12

I don’t get why people are downvoting this and flaming OP. Gaming addiction is nothing to be scoffed at or something you could easily just snap out of. I get it. We’re not mental health professionals but A LOT of us scapers have been addicted one way or another at some point in our life. I feel there needs to be more support from other scapers who have gone through this. I’m going to copy and paste and modify a comment I made a while ago.

I’ve been in a similar boat. During 2015-2018, I was extremely addicted to Runescape. I would play constantly non-stop. Then one day, my old account got tragically cleaned on a phishing scam back in 2018. It had 4B exp, multiple 200M skills in the 300s rank (1 skill had a top 150), trimmed, and is 18 years old today. I got so depressed the day I lost everything. I even took a 1 month LoA from work. However, once that time passed, I was over with it and quit entirely. I have not logged back in on that account to this day. Even when I returned in mid-2023, I started completely fresh. I was surprised I have way better control of myself when it comes to monitoring addiction. A few points:

  1. What’s keeping her playing? Ask her this question. What exactly is keeping you playing OSRS? What is one activity that you just can’t stop doing? Is it a goal? Is it peer pressure? Is it because you have nothing else you enjoy in life? What exactly is the answer? Do a self-assessment.

  2. Find a new hobby to distract yourself, preferably non-gaming. Runescape is a hobby to many people. As such, it’s very hard to quit that hobby. Find a new hobby that doesn’t lead you to Runescape. Talk to non-Runescape friends in real life. A gaming hobby is okay but if Runescape/OSRS is your all-time favorite game, it’s going to be tough gaming and not playing RS-related games.

  3. Let membership run out and promise yourself to not renew it. It’s tough if you have the grandfathered rates or you’re a yearly premier buyer. With bond prices being at its all-time high, it’s even more difficult because it feels like you’re wasting 12M OSRS per 2 weeks worth of playtime. However, if you’re going to keep extending your membership, you’re not doing yourself any favor. You are just telling yourself that you’ll commit another year. There’s a reason 99.9% of people in Runescape actively play only as a member.

  4. Unfollow social media related to Runescape. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit especially, RS-related Discord servers, etc. Those are a major distraction because whenever there’s a new hype content to be excited for, it brings people back. By still browsing it even though you don’t login, you are essentially playing the game without playing it. You’re waiting for new stuff to arrive. The FOMO or new content hype is what many players struggle to get out of.

  5. Leave silently. Do not tell your clanmates/friends you are quitting or taking a long break from OSRS unless they ask. By giving attention, you are essentially looking for their opinion. They’ll miss you in some way so it makes it harder to detach yourself. Friends/PvM groups are what keep people into this game.

  6. Stop giving feedback/opinions/complaints on OSRS. I know it’s against the theme of r/2007scape but by voicing your opinion, it’s not helping you detach from the game. You’re essentially trying to tell Jagex to please fix it because I want to continue playing as opposed to just quitting. You don’t owe them any ideas on how to improve. Stop wasting your energy on this and let others who want to stay do the talking. If you want to leave, what’s benefit is it for YOU personally to tell Jagex you’re leaving?

  7. r/StopGaming might help you a little but it sounds like you have other responsibilities in life.

To summarize everything, it’s about doing a self-evaluation with her life. What’s keeping her playing the game? What does she love most about OSRS? What is something she can’t get enough of in that game? Is it the sunk cost problem that a lot of 15+ year veteran cape owners face? Is it because she is too stressed at work that she has no relief of stress? Is it because she has too many friends that play OSRS? What exactly is the cause?

13

im sorry to say there isnt really a realistic technical solution here other than just completely blocking devices from connecting

when it comes to applying network policy, you need to block everything and then add exceptions for the things you want to allow

any attempt to do the other way around (allow by default and then block specific things) is doomed to fail

there are too many ways of spoofing the connection, you will end up spending the rest of your life playing whack-a-mole

14

i’ve definitely been in that situation. like some other commentors said: if it’s her only escape and coping mechanism than it might be a bit risky cutting her off cold turkey. i dont know how you would approach this with her; but for me turning runescape into a reward for being productive instead of runescape ~being~ the productivity helped my mental a lot. it’s all about moderation.

that being said; if she is outright refusing to be productive and throwing her life into runescape, as much as i hate to say it, maybe her moving out is a good call. from my own personal experience: another driving factor for me to “get my shit together” was my parents moving out of the states. it wasn’t until I was living on my own that my priorities shifted from “runescape gains” to “irl gains”

15

Have you tried to talk to her and see what the underlying problem for her escapism is? Like one does not just become an addict. There is always a reason to try and escape reality into a videogame. Like you thinking that blocking the game is enough shows that you want to help her but you arent going about it the right way. You might even push her into an even darker escapism from reality. Again you have mentioned that she seeks therapy which is wonderful. Maybe you should schedule a meeting with the psychiatrist to see if he can help you in that regard.

I really wish her alot smiles and freedom and you alot of patience.

16

Not telling you what to do but taking away a escape from someone with serious depression is probably not the way. You gotta find the root cause of said depression. Its the same reason why therapists actually advise against stopping smoking etc before the root cause has been stabilized.

17

Playing the game is a symptom, not the illness. Take this away and she will replace it with another quick, easy dopamine fix. You can ask my family what that looks like.

18

This is presumptuous to ask, because it assumes you haven’t already tried as hard as you can, but have you talked to her, listened to her, and REALLY tried to understand why she’s so desperately clinging to runescape?

Her relationship with the game sounds unhealthy, no question about that. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s likely a lesser evil. I say that as somebody who has personally been there and been WITH people there. I understand it’s painful to see anybody God forbit your SISTER go through that. But, ignoring that me and everybody on this thread has minimal context, I don’t think just blocking the site will helo whatever struggle she is going through. Like other people said, professional help can be good, and if the current therapist doesn’t seem to be working it’s worth looking for a new one.

But, presumptuous and biting as it is to say, it sounds like you don’t understand what she’s going through. You said it’s been years, and your post reads like you’re panicking but isn’t it already… too late to panic? At this point, drastic short term action is not going to do anything. If you’re really worried about her, I say try playing with her. Try understanding her. Try seeing what it is she sees and getting to know her better. If this was something that could be fixed in a day, she would probably never be stuck here in the first place.

19

I don’t have any suggestion to your question, but as someone who lived through similar experiences (I was the addict, to RS3 for years) she is going to find a way to play. My parents would literally hide our modem every night from me, so I actually contacted our internet provider and had a replacement sent, that I kept so I could play at night in my bedroom
This is a serious thing and I hope she treats it as such. I was pushing 12+ hours somedays, I dropped out of college, I came up with every excuse in the book about why I didn’t have a job, why I couldn’t find a job…being unchecked, it was ruining my life
With all that being said, what it took was our internet service being completely removed. After a week of, quite frankly, being a baby and complaining, I did get a job because other than water and what meal was cooked, I had nothing. Sometimes tough love is what it takes…it was in my situation. Sorry for the long reply

20

Block port 43594 and 43595 tcp/udp inbound and outbound traffic and she will not be able to play.