JAGEX (RuneScape) Community, Craft and AI: Running a Game That Never Dies

We sat down with Jon Bellamy, CEO of Jagex, to understand what it means to lead a studio built around a game people have played for more than two decades and still log into every day. Jon walked us through how RuneScape evolved from a childhood hobby into a 25-year community with its own rules, votes, culture and expectations.

This episode moves through community governance, the realities of running legacy games at scale, the tension between old players and new users, the future of Dragonwilds, the pain and promise of RuneScript in the AI era, and why great products still take time even when tools are faster than ever.

A Studio Built Around a Community

Jon contrasts Jagex with his time at Huge Games in the simplest possible way: Huge depended on smart UA and aggressive monetization.
Jagex depends on something entirely different.

“What you’re really running is a community, and that feels a lot more like government than game development.”

Most people at Jagex still play RuneScape at home. They were players first, developers second — which creates an unusual level of closeness and accountability. Updates affect them personally the moment they log in after work.

Over the last 20 years, the player base also grew up. The average player went from 11–12 to around 31, and Jagex had to mature with them.
Earlier in the company’s life, decisions were made for players; today they are made with them, because the community is older, vocal and deeply invested in how their world evolves.

Community Governance and the 70% Rule

Jagex operates one of the most extreme forms of community-driven development in the industry. In Old School RuneScape, no feature ships unless players vote for it , and not by a slim margin.

“There is no feature that gets released in Old School RuneScape unless it passes a poll. And that poll threshold is not 50%, it’s 70%.”

This gives players an almost unparalleled level of control, which protects the game from missteps but creates a clear challenge: if the community sees everything coming, it becomes hard to surprise and delight them. Jagex now experiments with time-limited modes and non-core content to create “magic moments” without violating the contract of transparency.

The model works because the community cares deeply, and Jagex treats them as collaborators. The result is slower decisions, fewer risks, and higher trust.

Dragonwilds and the Weight of Expectations

Dragonwilds is the newest big bet inside Jagex, and its early access launch exploded.
It has already sold over 900,000 units, with a full release planned for next year.

Success brought momentum and pressure. The team is now hiring aggressively and dramatically expanding the scope of the game.

But there's a tension unique to years of RuneScape culture: players are used to a weekly update cadence. A premium survival title simply doesn’t operate that way.

From the outside, some players feel the development is “not fast enough.”
From the inside, Jon sees the opposite:

“Behind the scenes we’ve got a bigger team than ever, with more resources than ever. The pace is insane… but if you measure progress by weekly updates, it’s hard to see.”

Dragonwilds is forcing Jagex to balance two realities:

• a new product with a different development rhythm
• a legacy audience trained to expect constant, visible movement

It’s a friction point, but also a chance to reset expectations while modernizing how the studio delivers big, long-form games.

Mobile as a Second Access Point, Not a New Game

RuneScape on mobile isn’t a spin-off. It’s the same universe, the same servers, the same characters, just accessed through a different device.

“You can download the app and play on your account in the same server as you would at home on your PC.”

But Jon is clear: the mobile experience today isn’t good enough, especially for someone returning after a decade away. The onboarding and membership flow carry friction that’s obvious to players, and obvious to the team.

That’s why Jagex is now bringing mobile UA discipline into a legacy PC-first product. Not to change the identity of the game, but to simplify the path back in:

1. reduce friction for returning players
2. modernize subscription and onboarding flows
3. make mobile the easiest entry point into a 25-year-old world

What AI Actually Changes at Jagex

Jon is cautious about where AI fits inside a 25-year game with a deeply human tone.
He draws a very clear line: AI will not write RuneScape content.

The humor, the world-building, the Monty Python-like tone — players would feel the difference immediately.

Where AI does matter is in the underlying ways of working.

Jagex still relies on RuneScript, a proprietary language created more than 20 years ago. Only about eight people in the world can write it. This limited the speed of development, until recently.

Jon explains a breakthrough he witnessed:

"AI can now help abstract Python into RuneScript, meaning many more people could eventually interact with parts of the engine that were once accessible to only a handful."

They’re not replacing RuneScript yet, but this shift could:

1. modernize workflows in a safe, controlled way
2. increase development speed
3. expand who can work on key systems

The Long Game — Why Loyalty Takes Time

Jon makes a clear distinction between hype and endurance. Tools, trends, and frameworks come and go, but lasting products, the ones people stay loyal to, take years of consistent work.

“I can’t name a tool from the last five years that I still use and feel loyal to. But I can name brands and games that have built loyalty over a long time. You can’t force it or fake it.”

He believes the industry often “backs the wrong horses,” chasing whatever feels new and exciting, while undervaluing companies that have quietly built sustainable, long-term value over decades.

Execution, he argues, hasn’t gotten easier, it just looks easier from the outside.
And in a world where everyone is using the same AI tools, long-term consistency and emotional connection may matter more than ever.

Wrap Up

Jon’s perspective comes from occupying every seat around the table — player, developer, investor, operator and now CEO. Across all of it, one theme returns: RuneScape endures not because it chases what’s new, but because it protects what matters.

A community that votes on its future. A studio where people still play the game they build. A willingness to modernize workflows without losing the human tone of the world.
And a belief that meaningful loyalty takes years, not hype cycles.

Jagex is maintaining a relationship millions of people grew up with, and still return to.