RuneScape is increasing their membership price by 50%, and Reddit is trying to censor it
Runescape is jacking up their subscription prices next month, going from like 12 bucks to 14 bucks a month. The increases range from 20% to 56% in price depending on currency. Players are PISSED about it especially since the company got bought out by some investment firm earlier this year, and they see it as a shameless cash grab.
Here's a mega thread about the price increase on Reddit. Overwhelmingly negative feedback on the price increase
So I decided to make a post on Reddit basically asking in a neutral way if it would deter people from playing.... And I was met with the most hostile, toxic keyboard warriors basically telling me "maybe stop working at McDonalds and you can afford it" and defending the company for the price increase. After an hour, my post was removed, and I was banned for a year without any explanation.
I'm honestly in shock that I would get banned just for asking a question, like they are that angry about people talking about the price increase?
Not a big surprise on the Huffman Shitshow. A lot of subs over there are insanely toxic. But yeah, a ban for that? That's crazy.
I didn't even know RuneScape had a subscription! I think I briefly played it about 15 years ago. Good game, I just don't have the time to play it, unfortunately. I assume you play? What's the community like over there?
I just looked up their pricing and it makes sense for them to have an optional subscription. $14 a month is in line with other similar games (e.g. wow). Would be nice if they had a couple of tiers of subscription. Maybe a $7 and a $14. But that might complicate things. How much can you do on the free mode?
There are other open source remakes (2004, 2006) but they're not as popular. I've actually contributed upstream to all 3 of the above, it's a very nice community!
I mean this with all the love in the world, but you're surprised that mods, in a gaming subreddit, are complete assholes?
This last year reddit has just been fucking trash all around, and I just... quit going, even though I still have things that the Fediverse just plain can't provide any useful content for.
Not because of anything spez did, or whatever stupid-ass money seeking bullshit they're trying next, but just that the content is crap and has gone from interesting and useful to trash. For example, the selfhosted subreddits went from cool software to being stuffed full of people who do NOTHING but argue about hosting email, and marketers telling you how easy it is to host something you can use to spam people. Just a degradation from good to shit.
And, even when it's not immediately obviously worse, it's still full of shitty bots, and the mods run around like they're fucking royalty and we should lick their boots.
Small note. This is only for new members. From their email to existing members:
"If you’re already a paying Member via a monthly or 6 monthly subscription, then nothing will change, as long as your subscription remains active, we will continue to honour the same price you’re paying now as part of our “Grandfather Rate” which is explained in more detail in the FAQ below."
Honestly for an MMO it's still a good price. MMOs in particular people sink a tonne of hours into, so it's pennies per hour which (like gaming in general) is a pretty good rate for entertainment. That doesn't mean huge mark ups like these are anything but infuriating.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Runescape should have tiered membership for multiple characters. For example, one character for $10, three for $20, ten for $50, etc. This would make it easier on player's wallets, and frankly it would encourage people to play the other game modes.
Having said that, I think the larger problem is that the people that develop the game get peanuts for pay. Most of them are fans of the game and just want to work on it, but doing so shouldn't trap them to a low income. It's not a good sign when developers can leave the company and earn a higher salary streaming Runescape content.
What can you expect when the company is owned by an investment group.
A lot of the gaming subs on Reddit suck. Especially /gaming, but not all of them. They’re full of industry shills and “git gud kid” types, and don’t you dare criticize anything the hive mind is softballing like a gaming magazine review.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, and I preface this by saying I do not fully understand the ins and outs of game development, though I am a software engineer (just not a game dev).
OSRS has made some absolutely amazing improvements in the last couple years. Almost every single update has hit perfectly with nothing but minor errors or complaints. New expansions and regions, new quests, new raid, weapon and damage rebalances, new bosses, new community events and special game modes, new updates to their clients both mobile and desktop, and most importantly a significantly better bot-busting system over the last few months.
This shit isn't cheap. That's a LOT of parallel systems and work, and OSRS continues to have 0 micro transactions outside of membership. True, RS3 and its cesspool of mtx helps fund OSRS, but I don't know how far that goes.
I'm OK with OSRS costing $2 more per month if it means that this current cadence of content of QOL updates marches on. Jagex has been absolutely nailing it and I'm very happy with them, and that's worth money to me.
The Reddit community is part of the reason I stopped playing RuneScape a few years ago. The in-game community was fine for the most part, as players would mostly keep to themselves or just talk with their own groups. But the subreddit would get super offended/aggressive towards each other for the stupidest things and the mods always seemed to make things worse.
I've always been of the believe that all online games with subscription services should always be $60 a year at most. If you do the math, $60 a year per player is way more than what single-player games make and maintaining/updating online games doesn't require as much work as making brand new games either.
And yes, I'm aware of the whole thing with the bonds and how they technically allow you to play the game for free but, at least compared to the old prices, they aren't as efficient as just buying a member and Jagex makes more money off of them. So, I still think that Jagex shouldn't change the membership prices.