Welp, the party is over for RuneScape fans: Jagex has once again announced that it’s raising the price of the game.
“Membership pricing has been unchanged in the last 2 years despite recent global inflationary pressures,” Jagex said last night. “On September 27 2024, the price of Membership will be changing for Premier Membership, as well as new 6-Month and 1-Month Memberships. If you’re already a paying Member via a monthly or 6 monthly subscription, then nothing will change, as long as your subscription remains active, we will continue to honour the same price you’re paying now as part of our Grandfather Rate[.]”
Month-to-month pricing will go up to $13.99 US, with cheaper prices for longer durations; it goes down to $8.29 if you pay 12 months ahead. Existing monthly and half-yearly subbers can keep renewing at their old rates as long as they don’t let their subs drop, but annual subbers will see their next renewal at the new rates regardless – no grandfathering for you, apparently.
“Premier Membership remains our best-value offer with a significant discount over subscribing monthly, and it still offers a discount equivalent to 4 months or more vs a monthly subscription in the majority of currencies,” the studio argues. “We have reduced the discount of Premier Membership vs Subscribing monthly to bring Premier Membership to a more sustainable level to account for rising development costs.” This effectively means that even if you’re a loyalist on an annual sub, you’ll see your fees jump by around 30% (it varies by region).
Jagex has actually raised its prices several times in recent memory; thought the company is technically correct that it has not raised sub prices since the last sub fee hike in 2022, it wasn’t as if that was the first time, and the company raised the price of RMT bonds earlier this year. But the UK studio has also clearly been trying to figure out ways to squeeze money from the game without upsetting players: Recall that last year, it was forced to abort a planned battle pass monetization system after player riots, and as of this summer it’s been teasing ways to remove its lockbox monetization schemes that have landed it in hot water with government regulators in the past.
The RuneScape community – which still remembers the days of a $4.99 sub – is in absolute uproar, complaining that the game doesn’t deliver regular-enough AAA content to deserve a AAA subscription fee, that Jagex is being shady by raising prices after just promising not to add more microtransactions to the game, that it’s too soon after the last price hike for another one, that RuneScape has no business trying to compete with FFXIV and WoW, and that now RuneScape all by itself costs more than annual PlayStation and Xbox passes.
