If you’re a player of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, you may have noticed that the Pride Month events in-game were reeled back pretty significantly. That, unfortunately, was by design, as insider reporting has uncovered that Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy made the decision to scale back official Pride events in the MMORPGs over concerns about starting controversy and facing backlash.
According to reporting from PinkNews, Bellamy posted a notice to devs on Friday, April 25th, that Jagex would not be running any Pride Month content in order to focus on “what players want.” This was met with a great deal of resistance from Jagex employees, who argued that most of the development work for these events was already done and things could be easily re-implemented. Many devs also reportedly offered to complete work on Pride events on their own time, and others simply suggested to hold in-game Pride parades at least.
Bellamy would not respond until the following Tuesday, when a staff Q&A session was convened. It was here that he confirmed OSRS’ Pride mini-quest would not return for the year and the Tales of Pride event would return but not feature new content, while player-run events would be allowed to continue.
Bellamy attempted to rationalize the decision during the Q&A, where he was quoted as saying that he’s attempting to protect Jagex from people who would wish developers harm and protect the company against the potential for controversy and the risk that carries.
“I understand that RuneScape […] is an escape from reality, and the reality that we find ourselves in is changing. It is getting stranger, more troubling, less moral, I would argue. Games and studios are being cancelled because of content that is perceived to be ‘woke’ or representative. The pendulum is swinging back in a way we didn’t expect. The content is now controversial in a way it didn’t used to be and that controversy now brings more risk than it did previously, risk that I’m personally responsible to protect against.”
Workers within Jagex wrote an open letter to management the following May, arguing that data from previous Pride events did not show a loss in revenue and beseeching leadership to not give in to hate. That letter earned a response from leadership that changed the studio’s stance to allow pre-programmed Pride events on a timer, while also asking devs to “not […] use the game as an outlet for our own views, but to craft worlds that serve our players, offering immersion, escape and meaning.”
When approached for comment, a Jagex spokesperson said that the company is “a strong supporter and ally of the LGBTQ+ community” and pointed to Pride events from previous years still being online “as was always [the studio’s] intention.”
Meanwhile, players for both games are taking the revelations poorly, expressing dismay and deep disappointment that Jagex has cowed to alt-right pressure. “They gain absolutely nothing from stopping it, and lose nothing by letting it continue,” one Redditor succinctly states.
