A RuneScape and Old School RuneScape player survey sent by developer Jagex which floated hypothetical but radical changes to the way both MMOs handle premium membership subscriptions, including tiers with in-game ads and exclusive benefits, sparked a firestorm of player backlash and protest. Despite quick attempts from Jagex CEO Phil Mansell (Mod Pips) to assure players that these changes aren't actually happening, that outrage has now spilled over to Steam in one of the year's first true-blue review bombs.
At the time of writing, Old School RuneScape's recent Steam reviews have dropped to 58% positive – a fair bit lower than the game's overall rating of 87% positive. There was a small but noticeable uptick in negative reviews on January 16 with 16 negative reviews, and that's more than quadrupled today with 76 negative reviews. It's a small salvo by review bombing standards, and 92 angry Steam users aren't going to move the needle at Jagex HQ – or more pertinently, at its corporate owner, because again, the game's overall rating is unphased – but it goes to show how hopping mad the community has been.
Still, this was enough to put a big ol' red line on the game's Steam graph, and the OSRS community seems to be wearing that red line like war paint. A Reddit post sharing word of the "Mixed" recent reviews seems to have prompted more players to reverse their positive review or write a new negative one of their own as the community continues to shut down the proposed membership ideas.
As a quick refresher, the most unpopular ideas among the various survey variants included enhanced account security and player support locked behind more expensive membership tiers, access to exclusive members world, and mobile-only access or in-game advertisements for cheaper tiers. Many negative Steam reviews have lampooned the survey's verbiage, yielding such classics as:
"To read this review, please upgrade to the Deluxe package for a premium fee of £2.99 extra per month," one user put it.
"You done ****** up jiggleflex," from another user, really says a lot.
Others have been more direct with their criticism: "There is no amount of apologising that will regain the trust of the community. The audacity to even suggest locking game functionality behind a paywall goes against everything this game and community stands for," says Brother Cabbages in one of the reviews rated as most "helpful" by other users.
As players continue to share screenshots of their canceled subscriptions and call on others to do the same, and as Steam becomes another way for players to express their anger, a recent Twitch clip of ex-Jagex employee Mod Mat K began circulating. Discussing the backlash on stream, Mat K reckoned that whenever the OSRS player base threatens to riot or cancel membership, "you guys never do it. Never. Maybe it drops 0.001%. You're all mouth, all of you. You don't follow through. Those who do unsub on the day sub about two days later."
Mat K has a point, though the player response here has been particularly fierce by my assessment. There are, notably, 115,533 people playing Old School RuneScape at the time of writing, which is comfortably within the game's norms. As severe as this backlash has been, the vast majority of players clearly haven't been put off playing. Then again, this has all been positioned as proactively shutting down proposed ideas before they actually manifest, not reacting to actual in-game changes. None of the subscription changes mentioned in the survey have happened or even been formally pitched, alarming as they may be.
Mansell said in the Jagex blog post addressing the player response: "Surveys like this allow us to gather feedback on ideas before they even come close to becoming reality. They act as an important safeguard, ensuring that anything unpopular or misaligned with the community’s values is identified early." That said, I would expect this storm to continue for a few more days at least, or perhaps until Jagex releases another statement outlining what it will and won't do.
After backlash and a Steam review bomb last year, Tekken 8 dev Bandai Namco gave out $5 to cover controversial DLC and said it will do things differently next time.
