Jagex: 105 million played RuneScape

By Robert Purchese Published 30 August, 2009

MMO "possibly" generates WOW profits.

Jagex reckons that RuneScape makes "possibly" as much money as World of Warcraft, and is officially "the world's biggest free game".

"More than 10 million [people play RuneScape]," Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard told Eurogamer. "[But] It depends if you're taking a day, a week, three months. We did another stat for the Guinness Book of World Records that was total active unique [users] over time, and that was just over 105 million. So 105 million people have touched it."

"An honest answer is we don't measure the success of the business based on financial returns," he said. "The company is very strong financially, and it is thanks to RuneScape, but for us it's all about active players. It doesn't matter to us really if they're free or paying for the expansion - as long as it's going north we really don't care."

RuneScape has been around for nine years, and has around "a million lines of scripted content", which Gerhard believes classes the free-to-play MMO as "an epic game". Even now, Jagex updates the MMO weekly with fresh content, and that hefty backlog is "the only reason why RuneScape is always ahead of the curve", designer Henrique Olifiers chimed in.

RuneScape was completely free for almost four years and supported by adverts, but financial pressure eventually forced Jagex to introduce an optional "premium content kind of thing", he said, that could have swung either way. Luckily, Jagex did well out of it. "Overnight 20 per cent of our players just switched." Gerhard revealed that that percentage of paying customers remains the same today.

"But we're very, very conscious that every game has to be completely free: no demo, no trial - it's a completely free game. If you like it, if you want more, then there's the expansion pack too," said Gerhard.

Jagex now employs a whopping 400 people across two Cambridge studios (and one London branch), and puts them to work on RuneScape, casual portal FunOrb and new sci-fi MMO MechScape. The latter has had tens of millions of pounds of investment and is nearly ready to be unveiled.

Head over to the full interview with Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard and MechScape designer Henrique Olifiers to find out much more.

Alternatively, head to the RuneScape website to give the browser-based MMO a go.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • spudsbuckley #1 2 years ago

    Runescape is utter rubbish.

  • maverick0182 #2 2 years ago

    Couldn't agree with you more spuds.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #3 2 years ago

    I've tried it twice now since it started and it's still pants. I really wanted to like it though.

  • DefdumBlindkid #4 2 years ago

    I live in Cambridge and Jagex were recruiting so I looked into Runescape. What a piece of crap- like something from the 80's. I was expecting WOW or similar...

  • hula hoops #5 2 years ago

    So, over 9 years 105 millions of people is claimed to have tried Runescape. And 10 millions decided to stay a little longer, so the other 95 millions of people, i.e., 90.5% of people think Runescape is utter rubbish. So spuds, you are in majority there mate.

  • noobjob #6 2 years ago

    i played this game nonstop when i was like 11-14 its strange because its not that good its just really addicting but like cigarettes its not healthy......

  • Alterego-X #7 2 years ago

    @hula hoops: By this logic, every game that was NOT bought by the majority of Earth's population is "utter rubish".

    Of course, since its free, many will try it without a serious intention to keep playing. Also, since it's a 9 year old game, many people might have played it for months and years before getting bored, and you would still put them into the "utter rubish" category.

    What matters, is the total amount of players who are actually interested in it, and those who pay for it. And apparently, there is more of these than for most other games.

  • Optyk #8 2 years ago

    Runescape is where a lot of WoW players come from after they get fed up of it.

  • Snuffb0t #9 2 years ago

    "An honest answer is we don't measure the success of the business based on financial returns," Really? Step away from the crack pipe

  • Bravestinsane #10 2 years ago

    @Pretty Much all of you..

    Runescape isn't rubish, its actually a pretty good game because it has bad graphics you automatically hail it as rubish....

    None of you have considered it is a JAVA game and i know of no other Java game that plays in a browser that has better graphics that than. Its a java game that can use a graphics card for AA ffs. I don't play it all the time its one of those phase games play it for a while stop for a while.

    As a MMO it's pretty good. Quests actually work, ill admit it would be nice to have muliplayer co-op quests but at the same time, i have played LOTRO i think thats a decent game but its unplayable at times, Fellowship quests are hard to play because the stage i game i can't even find people to do a main story line quest. With runescape its not dependent on other people to do quests.

    @Defdumblindkid

    Your a moron

    "Expecting WoW or similar" you think every MMO in existance should be based on WoW do you thats the worst think your could possibly say.

    Mark me down you all will anyway but that fact is not one of you have taking into consideration that it is a Java MMO not a full 14GB installed game Runescape doesnt need to be installed just loaded.

    You people are hardly "Gamers" you can't even take into consideration what a game is....your the perfect example of the moronic fanboys of the modern day ...OMG ITS GRAFICS ARE SHIT THE GAME IS POOP WAAAA

    Graphics do not make a game dipshits it just makes it look nicer.

  • Lukey__b #11 2 years ago

    @Bravestinsane

    Well... if the crappy graphics hadn't put me off, then the chance of bumping into you has.

  • Bravestinsane #12 2 years ago

    I play it solo and i couldn't care less what you think of me im glad i would never bump into you your probably one of those people who always finds something to moan at rather than being able to appreciate something for what it is.

  • DefdumBlindkid #13 2 years ago

    'your a moron'- do you know my wife, lol?
    If people are going to dedicate whole days of their lives playing this sort of stuff then surely it makes sense to make it look pretty?

  • M_of_the_sys #14 2 years ago

    I liked the way all the skills were linked to each other. The resource gathering and such was done in an interesting way. I wouldn't say it was a 'crap' game but I did get bored of it, after a long while though. Tried WoW after that and I just thought it was worse. The gameplay was crap and it didn't seem as interactive to me.
    I think most of the people DO base their opinion on graphics but hey, I'm still a fan of FFVII. Call me old fashioned.

  • hula hoops #15 2 years ago

    @ Alterego-X: I can't see the correlation between my argument and "every game that was NOT bought by the majority of Earth's population is "utter rubish". ". At no point I mentioned that a game has to be bought my the majority of earth population to be good. Some people do have trouble reading and understanding English.

  • azun #16 2 years ago

    people this game is meant for kids. thats why it isn't the best graphics. and actually its an incredible game. it has far more content than any other game out there. (and if you like grinders this isn't the game for you) geez is that a hard concept to grasp. and over 9 years. do you really expect every one that started playing it to continue playing it. WOW has increased in players but that doesn't mean that's all the people that have tried im curios to know the current subscribers and the total people who have subscribed.

  • chiefian #17 2 years ago

    @ Bravestinsane,

    It's "You're a moron".

    At least spell correctly if you're going to insult someone.

    RuneScape is addictive, just like most MMO's I've tried. Considering it's a browser based game it's got more subscribers than most MMOs. Now that's impressive.

  • IronCladChicken #18 2 years ago

    @noobjob
    I think you mean 'addictive'.