British developer Jagex announced a round of layoffs. Community Manager JagexHooli confirmed it earlier this week with the following Reddit comment:
Yes, there have unfortunately been job reductions at Jagex. These have been made as part of changes in a company restructure as Jagex puts more emphasis on RuneScape games and community growth. The majority of roles are from non-game dev and non-player facing areas. There are some exceptions within the RS team as part the company's focus on a streamlined development approach.
I’m sure many of you are concerned about what this means for RuneScape 3. This is not a change in direction from what Mod North has said before – we are still committed to growing this game and investing in it. Our Roadmap won’t change because of these job reductions, and we’ll continue the great path we’ve been on with our content. We will talk to you about this when the time is right.
What matters most right now are the people affected by this change. The studio’s focus is to support those affected, as is mine. Now is the time we put them first and do everything we can to help them out.
At the same time, work on 'Project Zanaris', whose objective was to allow private servers for Old School RuneScape, has been paused. On this note, Jagex said:
After careful consideration, we've decided to pause work on Zanaris indefinitely. We're committed to delivering the best possible Old School RuneScape experience. With a renewed focus and continued support from our incredible team, we're excited to keep making OSRS even better for everyone.
We understand that feelings around the project were mixed, and many of the concerns raised were fair. The truth is, there are other areas of the core Old School experience that deserve more attention right now. While Zanaris was ambitious and innovative, it wouldn't have met expectations until much later in development. Rather than stretch our focus, we want to prioritise the things that matter most to you today.
Jagex recently released RuneScape: Dragonwilds, a survival cooperative multiplayer game, on Steam Early Access. According to Steam data, it was purchased by 550K, 789K, or 842K users, depending on the analytics website (VG Insights, Gamalytic, PlayTracker).
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