After almost 20 years in enterprise, RuneScape developer Jagex has simply had its most worthwhile yr ever. That’s thanks largely to the continued success of its flagship game. RuneScape is hitting the best subscriber counts it’s had within the final seven years, and income for the sequence has crossed the $1 billion threshold because of the 260 million individuals who have signed up to this point.
For British developer Jagex, which means income of £84.9 million for the newest fiscal yr, up 14.2% in comparison with the earlier interval. Profit is up a whopping 51% to £43.5 million, which makes it the most important yr for the reason that studio began in 2000.
“2017’s growth,” CEO Phil Mansell tells GamesIndusty.biz, “came from focusing on nurturing our RuneScape communities and finding innovations that keep long-established games fresh and exciting for all types of players.”
In extra concrete phrases, Mansell says the corporate has centered on group engagement to maintain current gamers within the game and lapsed gamers coming again. “For example, in 2017 we stepped up our investment in livestreaming and esports, with the RuneScape franchise becoming a top 15 ‘most popular’ title on Twitch and players streaming 16 million minutes of content.”
There are additionally the results of RuneScape mobile to contemplate, and Jagex is utilizing all this success to proceed rising. Mansell says the corporate’s “three strategies” are “expanding the RuneScape universe, creating new living games, and third-party live game publishing.” We’ve already heard the concept Jagex wants to be a publisher, and it appears the studio is poised to make that occur.
Nonetheless, Mansell says the corporate gained’t be “cannibalising existing teams” for all this growth, including that RuneScape gamers can count on continued help for “the very long term.”
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