RuneScape might be old, but its newer efforts are raking in the dough. Today, Jagex announced its Fiscal Year 2018 financial results, and they’re better than a chest full of gold. Or, considering that it’s basically all about the money, they are a chest full of gold.
Revenue for the year was 92.8 million pounds, or about $121 million in US dollars, an increase of 9.3% on a year-over-year basis. Profits were about half that, or 46.8 million GBP, up 3.8% YoY. Jagex attributed the good results to Old School RuneScape’s launch on iOS and Android devices, where it was installed on over five million devices, as well as the highest ever paid membership numbers for RuneScape.
It marks the fourth successive year of growth for Jagex, which also added 100 new employees and increased its investment in research and development by 69%. Overall, revenues for the company have increased by 46.3% since 2015, which isn’t too bad for a company that’s relied on some iteration of the same MMORPG since 2001.
Well, Runescape is actually interesting, being the only MMORPG to have actual custom quests that aren’t just “Kill X monster(s)” or “Deliver X item(s) to Y NPC.”
I suspect it also helps that competition from Korean/Chinese MMOs has been dying as of late too.