Weeks after crossing 200,000 concurrent players, Old School RuneScape has rocketed right onto a new peak with over 240,000 players online, further cementing the MMO's summer explosion.
Multiple OSRS players clocked the milestone on Reddit, with "a random Sunday" seeing the game soar to at least 240,851 concurrents, according to the largest figure I've seen in screenshots. For comparison, mainline RuneScape has about 30,000 concurrent players whenever I check it.
To put that into perspective, the top three most-played games on Steam at the time of writing are (according to Steam Charts and SteamDB): Counter-Strike 2 at 1.1 million concurrent players, Dota 2 at around 600,000 players, and PUBG at approximately 420,000 players. These player numbers fluctuate heavily and differ slightly between data trackers, but these three games are most often the ones topping the Steam charts.
OSRS has 209,676 people online at the time of writing, and even at this slightly lower figure, it would be the fourth-biggest game on Steam, beating the likes of Delta Force and Apex Legends.
The irony is that OSRS is actually on Steam, but its tiny Steam player figures only account for the few people who are playing the game through Valve's store and ecosystem. The vast majority of OSRS players use other clients, including third-party clients like Runelite which offer useful plugins.
"Dude there's people everywhere," Reddit user fUIMos_ said of the player flood.
"It's fantastic to see this. Extremely exciting. Even if 95% of the oncoming crowd leaves after a month or two, it's a huge influx of new players who stick around," adds Evil_Steven, who clearly cannot be trusted.
For some time now, OSRS players have argued that the game is enjoying a new golden age of high-quality, varied content and record player turnout. But when the game hit 200,000 players amid the one-two punch of a World of Warcraft player migration and a massive update for the Varlamore region, some folks felt that gold simply wasn't enough. Instead, they heralded a "Platinum Age" that even got a nod from the folks at developer Jagex.
With this new milestone, Reddit user Tasty_Abrocoma_5340 summed up the mood in the room: "It's the golden omega platinum age." That feels about right.
Jagex also acknowledged the game's latest player record. "Thank you all for playing Old School RuneScape," a tweet reads. "Today we broke our peak player count."
In addition to OSRS fans and content creators, the replies to Jagex's post are notably filled with World of Warcraft streamers who've recently become obsessed with the game. "OSRS is amazing," replies streamer Guzu. "HOLY MOLY," adds fellow streamer Savix. "DESERVED," echoes WoW's AnnieFuchsia.
10 years later, Old School RuneScape is still the best MMO I've ever played – and seeing over 200,000 people jumping on reminds me why I fell in love with it in the first place.
