Runescape earns Jagex £38 million in 12 months

via Casual Gaming


Free-to-play MMO Runescape earned its developer-publisher Jagex over £38.4 million in revenues in the 12 months leading up to March 2009. That's a profit of £18 million, according to records held at Companies House.

The figures were unearthed by Games Brief, and go some way to showing that free-to-play models can still be hugely profitable for companies that handle the method correctly. As Games Brief's Nicholas Lovell points out, Jagex's revenues demonstrate a 47 per cent operating margin in spite of the tens of millions spent on Mechscape, which was famously cancelled, or at least re-appropriated.

Runescape does offer a more complete game experience for those who pay, but so substantial is the free offering, 90 per cent of the MMO's 10 million monthly unique users choose to play the free version.

Jagex proudly declines to spend money on advertising its game, but welcomes some £2 million each year in ad revenue.

Earlier this year Jagex confirmed that it is to move into third-party publishing, which started with the launch of War of Legends.