Every once in a while, I’ll bump into a long-running MMORPG that isn’t on Steam and think, wait, what? How is that thing not on here yet? Old School RuneScape gave me just that sort of head-spin today as it’s announced that’s it’s finally dropping on Steam on February 24th, joining core RuneScape itself, which launched there last October.
“Old School RuneScape is coming to the Steam platform on 24th February 2021. The beloved MMORPG launch on Steam comes as part of Jagex’s mission to continue to bring the RuneScape universe to more players around the world and is currently available for both PC and mobile players. The Coming Soon store page is now live on Steam, where players can Wishlist the game and be notified as soon as it’s released. Old School RuneScape’s Steam debut will deliver a custom-built Steam experience with a dedicated Old School Steam Community Hub, featuring weekly announcements, guides, articles, artwork, and videos, in addition to membership packages and achievements.”
Jagex, which is currently embroiled in a puzzling ownership dispute, says that it saw a player concurrency of 157,000 people during the game’s recent Leagues II: Trailblazer event – not shabby at all. But then it unilaterally declared RuneScape “the world’s most enduring and largest player-driven MMORPG,” which seems like exactly the sort of thing people will have fun calling out down in the comments, like that time CCP Games declared itself a “gaming genius.” (It was only Tuesday.) Concomitantly, I have declared ice cream the only food on Earth worth consuming and Eliot has declared himself to have 22 Charisma and a Deck of Many Things. This is fun, we can do this all day.
