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The Internet Games

Jagex Nixes Community-Built RuneScape HD Client, Massive Backlash Follows (runescape.com) 22

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
New submitter Sauce Tin writes: In a blog post, Jagex announced the shutdown of a community-driven RuneScape HD graphics client. The announcement came at an inopportune time -- the community client was prepped for release this week and had been announced years beforehand, with 2,000+ hours of effort of a single individual behind it. The effort had been noticed by Jagex, however no opposition from the company was made -- until recently. Thousands of players vented on the game's subreddit, ultimately reaching the top of r/all. Jagex has had a past of infuriating its player base over the years, including the removal of free trade, PvP combat, and LGBT holiday content.
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Jagex Nixes Community-Built RuneScape HD Client, Massive Backlash Follows More

Jagex Nixes Community-Built RuneScape HD Client, Massive Backlash Follows

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  • And they keep coming back for more. I guess it's that good...

    • Maybe it's a BDSM game?

      • Probably. You have to be pretty masochist to keep playing that game after all that.

        • Yes, those of us who play RS have to be a masochist is someway. The entire game is a grind that requires thousands of hours to succeed. However, for many longtime players Runescape is more than just a game. It is many of ours first experience with online gaming, The first place where people who struggled socially were able to find acceptance. The nostalgia of our youth encapsulated in a game. In middle/start of high school Runescape probably saved my life. I had very little friends in real life
    • Can someone explain what this means so we can decide whether we should be outraged or not? At the moment all I'm getting is that something I've never heard of before is shutting down something graphics-related that I've never heard of before.
      • This issue is almost entirely caused by the relationship that Jagex has with its player base. In 2012 Jagex released a rolled back version of the game to 2007 as many were unhappy with some of the updates that had been implemented over the past several years. One of the primary components of OSRS(the rolled back version of the game) was that every update put into the game had to pass a community poll with 75% approval or more, otherwise it would not be implemented in the main game. As the games age beg
        • Great summary, thanks! Maybe the mods can replace the original text with your one, this is how an overview of a story should be written.

  • I guess Jagex (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I guess Jagex are a bunch of Jagoffs.

    Do people seriously pay for this kind of treatment?

    • Re:I guess Jagex (Score:5, Informative)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @09:09PM (#61773849) Homepage Journal

      Jagex has changed hands twice in the past two years, all three owners have been massive asset management companies. The current owner does restaurants, private equity (e.g. leveraged buyouts), sporting goods, semiconducts, health care, and defense technology. The other owners were similar.

      So it's possible that this community project was OK with Jagex's bosses at the Hongtou Group back in 2018; that MacArthur Fortune Holding owned Jagex for so little time nobody there got wind of it, and that someone at the Carlyle Group just found out about it and put the kibosh on. Or it could be Jagex management itself changed its mind. We don't know and we'll probably never know.

      It doesn't seem likely that Jagex did this to intentionally screw over community developers, but the fact that some superfan developer got screwed over isn't going to count for anything. This is life in for-profit, proprietary software. How many times has Apple pulled the rug out from under developers after enticing them to spend years on some initiative. As a developer it's a mistake to love a proprietary platform. The company that owns it doesn't reciprocate that love or feel bound by any sacrifices you made. Some people say that companies act like sociopaths, but it's more like companies are mindless, profit-making machines. They don't feel your pain, any more than a milling machine does when it rips your finger off.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Don't disregard the potential uses for said client, e.g. as a nearly-ready-to-go frontend for a similar-but-sufficiently-legally-dissimilar competitor that hasn't just pissed off its user base.

        • True, but do we know that the userbase is pissed off?

          The reddit culture is to complain loudly using hyperbole. Thousands of reddit accounts may have complained, but how many frequent users does that actually represent? How many of the people who complained actually care? And with 50k people connected to the game right now, is it actually a large number?

          • Long time RS player here. A vast majority of players are upset about this issue. Since 2015 the community has pushed for Jagex to create an HD Frontend for the game. In 2018, when the topic was brought up again the company in a stream to its viewers announced that there was absolutely NO CHANCE that they were going to put in the work for an HD Client. At this point is when the work on the Fans project started, He communicated his intentions, as well as regularly posted updates about his project on all

    • No, they don't pay for that.

      One guy spent 2000 hours, which is 250 8 hour days, or a little over 2 years of 16 hours per weekend. Writing custom client software for a proprietary game, in violation of the terms of service.

      Probably most of the people playing are glad about it, because if some players have extra features, that isn't necessarily a "feature" for the game; it might be seen as a bug.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by strech ( 167037 )

        No, they don't pay for that.

        One guy spent 2000 hours, which is 250 8 hour days, or a little over 2 years of 16 hours per weekend. Writing custom client software for a proprietary game, in violation of the terms of service.

        Probably most of the people playing are glad about it, because if some players have extra features, that isn't necessarily a "feature" for the game; it might be seen as a bug.

        It wasn't in violation of the terms of service, which allowed the 3rd Party client (which is still around, as are other approved 3rd party clients, which seem to be extensively used) and mods that didn't affect gameplay (like this HD mod). If you read the announcement linked in the sxummary [runescape.com], it notes that they have to update the ToS to actually ban it:

        Next week we'll be updating the Third-Party Guidelines, published in 2019, to include reference to projects and features which seek to change the appearance of the game.

        So it's not just banning the project, it's letting the project go on for two years before suddenly changing the rules to ban a project about to release that

        • It's actually just a graphics plugin for a third party client that still works.

          They didn't have to "update the ToS to actually ban it." The terms of service always said that third party software had to comply with whatever rules they made at any time. They updated the ToS to clarify things for others in the future. Which was probably a mistake, as it increased the confusion.

          The idea that they let the project go on for years and then banned it ignores that the company changed ownership three times in the pas

  • Thats why never again... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @09:19PM (#61773875)

    .. in my life will I rely on anything that isn't 100% pure FOSS for mission critical things or building a non-trivial passion project with hundreds or thousands of hours going into it. I did it once, for some good reasons, but I got burned in the end.

    Never again.

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