Update: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that World of Warcraft features customizable player housing while RuneScape doesn’t. RuneScape has in fact offered player housing since 2006. Corrected story follows.
RuneScape developer Jagex announced earlier today that it is once again increasing the price of RuneScape memberships. Effective today, the price of a monthly membership subscription has increased from $13.99 to $14.99 per month while the price of an annual membership has increased from $99.48 to $131.88 per year.
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Players with grandfathered 6-month memberships will be forced to transition to monthly memberships to pay a reduced rate, as Jagex is no longer offering 6-month memberships under its new pricing scheme. Bonds, tradable in-game items that can be purchased with real currency and redeemed for membership access, are also more costly.
In its news post detailing the increased pricing, Jagex claimed that the changes will support an “ambitious” development roadmap “from enhancing our core systems, to improving our supporting services, and ensuring continued delivery of the kind of updates players value most.”
Prioritizing value for its players is an interesting rationale for Jagex to cite, as the price changes make its annual membership a considerably worse deal. Under the September 2024 membership rates, the previous $99.48 annual membership was 40.7% cheaper than the $167.88 players would pay for a full year of monthly membership fees.
Now, after a more than $30 increase, the new $131.88 annual membership only saves players 26.7% of the $179.88 they’d pay for 12 months of the increased monthly membership rate.
It’s worth noting that the latest pricing increase is arriving just four months after Jagex agreed to scrap Treasure Hunter microtransactions from RuneScape 3 after players overwhelmingly voted in favor of its removal, but it’s unclear whether the increased membership costs might be intended to help offset the loss of that revenue stream.
In the US, RuneScape’s monthly membership price is now on par with the cost of a monthly World of Warcraft subscription—which, unlike RuneScape, offers multiple characters per account, and features a visual presentation in line with its much higher production costs. (Admittedly, you have to interact with a lot more gnomes in WoW, which is a cost all its own.) Worse, in some regions, RuneScape actually costs more: The European pricing for its monthly membership now costs €13.49 per month where WoW only costs €12.99.
Players are, unsurprisingly, displeased with the price hike.
“Crazy that they made the one plan that felt somewhat reasonable (at least in comparison to the one month option) so expensive,” said user ImDoneCommenting in one of the many critical threads currently dominating the OSRS subreddit. “Now both options feel like bad value.”
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