Remember a couple of years back when RuneScape company Jagex was bought out by China’s Shandong Hongda, a company known primarily for its iron ore mining operations, to the tune of $300 million? Then the companies performed some corporate magic to create Zhongji Holding, which was set to oversee the games branch of the corporation. (It later changed its name to Shanghai Fukong.)
And then… everybody spent the last few years shuffling execs and seemingly making a ton of money as RuneScape and its spinoffs continued to increase in popularity. Jagex was even working on at least one more MMO.
That’s why it might seem initially puzzling that this week Reuters published a brief announcement that Shanghai Fukong is hoping to sell its “entire or partial stake” in the UK-based Jagex Ltd. But it looks as though while Jagex was making bank and generating its best year ever in 2018, Shanghai Fukong was down on its luck. Not only was the Chinese games market stifled last year by the government bureaucracy’s freeze on approving new games, but the communication sector in the country is down, and Shanghai Fukong performed poorly against it, leading the venture capitalist firm to poor annual revenues and plunging stocks.
Yahoo also reports that Shanghai Fukong’s chairman resigned for “personal reasons” less than a month ago.
In other words, if you’ve got any cash left over after buying Nexon, maybe spare a bit for Jagex.
Hopefully they just buy themselves out and stop the investment firms from getting a cut of the profits. That way they can actually have a say in the matter and bring runescape back to what originally made it great
Huh. Well, I’m still technically playing for a month or two more. I’ll see what happens. Starting to lose interest/get bored. Got back on LOTRO on my previously VIP’d account but as a free player, and the amount of stuff they lock up/and how they force you to buy certain things is making me reconsider that too…
Runescape kept up but not it’s Chinese microtransaction pushing overlords, maybe now we’ll find the microtransactions stop pushing, maybe not~ But either way, perhaps Jagex can go back to it’s roots- or not, heck if I care~
Well runes ape bakc in 2006-2010 had around 120k-200k+ players at any given single time. Now even with osrs rs3 and mobile rs barely scraps by 150k players total. So did it grow in popularity? No it didn’t. It fell, and it fell a lot. So it’s no surprise actually that they would be up for sale after all the fuck ups they’ve had..
Right, except their revenue and profits are the highest they’ve ever been and it keeps growing. RuneScape isn’t getting sold because it’s doing badly, it’s being sold because its investor’s other holdings tanked and they need the money.
But they have alot less bots I remember more bots then players and the addition of old school split the player base
Ideally, if they can somehow buy back their own independence that would be great.
holding companies. The scourge of existence.
I hope we can still farm gold
Please don’t’ let Daybreak near Jag. Pleeeease!!!
or…Activision?!
oh god, is this going to turn into such a thread where people whine about every game company or publisher that ever existed
Like pretty much everything else, yes! On topic, I think jagex would be a little too big for Daybreak (they need many MANY more $300 sub’s for that ;) )
And with cause, I’m afraid.
Well that’s what you get when the entire industry seems so anti-consumer.
BAH GAWD THAT’S EA’S MUSIC!
Maybe they don’t like the mining smithing rework lol
Because this, like many other western purchased games, has very little to do with income and everything to do with data.