Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure fans are still enjoying RuneScape in 25 years, even if it means losing money.
Bellamy spoke to The Game Business at Gamescom about the future of the venerable game, and why its modern iteration, RuneScape 3, hasn’t been resonating with players in the same way as Old School RuneScape, its retro-styled counterpart.
In fact, Old School RuneScape only exists to fill a void left by the shifting aesthetic identity of the modern version of the game, and has been coexisting and evolving independently from the modern version ever since, and even consistently has more players.
However, Bellamy says Jagex has zeroed in on what drove players away from the new game, and they’re looking to deal with some of those to bring them back, even if it means taking some short-term financial losses.
Short-Term Losses For Long-Term Gains
According to Bellamy, in player surveys conducted by Jagex, what they found was that a major element that pushed players away was the modern game’s implementation of microtransactions back in 2012.
Their surveys found that, if they were to “wind back” their approach to microtransactions,...
