Fantasy MMO RuneScape developer Jagex sure seems to trust its player base. The company announced Wednesday that it will soon remove a mechanic that has been in the game since 2014, and critically, makes Jagex money. No matter: Fans voted to get rid of it, and the developer is actually following through.
Like many games, RuneScape has microtransactions. One of these includes Treasure Hunter, a daily activity players can participate in to unlock prizes. RuneScape awards players a certain number of keys every day that unlock chests with prizes, like equipment or experience points. A couple of years after its introduction, Treasure Hunter only became more controversial as Jagex further oriented it into gambling territory. At one point, for example, players could essentially bet on their existing prizes to get improved rewards. Jagex pulled back on this promotion and apologized, at the time noting that the developer believed it could refine Treasure Hunter to be a better player experience without compromising its income.
While Treasure Hunter remained in the game, the incident also signaled a general willingness to listen to the player base. Jagex appeared to take concerns seriously enough that it continued exploring other monetization options over the next few years, like battle passes and service-oriented purchases, like summoning traders at will.
“We’ve become very dependent on Treasure Hunter and players have had concerns about that and we want to deal with it,” Jagex said in 2019.
Some of the subsequent experiments didn’t work out, but Jagex has perpetually seemed genuine about its intention to make money without ruffling too many feathers. In 2024, Jagex surveyed players and discovered that nearly half of the player base wasn’t happy with the microtransactions in the game, and that a significant portion of ex-players claimed they would consider returning if monetization options improved.
“Our MTX approach is harming RuneScape and it’s time that we took action,” Jagex said in the summer of 2025, before introducing a number of new tweaks to the microtransaction system. These adjustments only lasted about a month each, and they tested different approaches to monetization — like making discontinued cosmetics available for purchase once more. But in October 2025, Jagex hit the community with a juicy proposal: what if RuneScape just did away with Treasure Hunter altogether?
A poll was opened on Oct. 29, with Jagex promising that the proposal would be implemented if it reached 100,000 ‘yes’ votes. For context, RuneScape hit a player high count of 200,000 concurrents in 2024. Over its lifetime, though, millions of people have played RuneScape — and anyone with an account could vote. It took less than 24 hours to reach the 100,000 votes. And now, Jagex says it is making good on its promises.
The changes won’t be immediate, with Jagex dating the removal of Treasure Hunter and cessation of experience and skill-based purchases for January 2026. But not only are these changes coming, they’re also a part of a larger effort to better the game. Jagex will be instituting something it calls an “Integrity Roadmap” that will span a year.
“Tackling areas of the game that matter the most to RuneScape players, the Integrity Roadmap will target the very heart of longstanding issues within the game, ranging from UI, combat, dailyscape, early and mid-game experiences, visual identity, and much more,” Jagex says in a press release. The hope is to kick off a much-needed new era for the 24-year-old game. While it’s impressive that RuneScape has survived much longer than most live service games do, it still struggles with things like player acquisition, retention, and monetization.
As one Redditor astutely put it a couple of weeks ago in a thread discussing recent monetization experiments, RuneScape players tend to be older diehards. And unlike kids who have things like summer vacation or school that lets out in the early afternoon, adults tend to have much more limited playtime opportunities. This audience is thus willing to pay for a more streamlined experience.
“But it isn’t sustainable,” the fan wrote. “Older players eventually quit, but no one takes their place. It will be a tough balancing exercise to not scare off these players while attracting new players.”
Jagex seems aware of this and is intent on approaching 2026 as the start of a new era for RuneScape. Better monetization options — and the PR that comes with provocative, sweeping actions like putting its future up to a fan vote — will help. But convincing people to try an old game over, say, a new Fortnite season will still likely be an uphill battle.
“The removal of Treasure Hunter is just one part of a wider transformation across Jagex, which is seeing a renewed commitment to delivering deeper value, greater fairness and long-term improvements for players across all our games,” says Jon Bellamy, CEO of Jagex.
