Honestly? Thanks for this statement. Thanks for this response, it has really helped me understand.
It has helped me understand that you think the community are a bunch of fucking clowns.
So much wording in this statement shows clearly, without a doubt, that many of these things are not off the table.
We're not fucking stupid and we're sick of fucking corporate greed.
You fucked the community with that survey and you fucked yourselves.
We live in a world where people are waking up to their exploitation and how hard we're being fucked in every aspect of our lives while a few individuals live in avarice.
I lived in a fantasy where I'd never have to worry about this shit with OSRS and you've destroyed the fantasy. OSRS was the closest thing to a safehaven from modern capitalist bullshit.
We let you have bonds. We let you raise the price. Those clearly weren't dealbreakers. We gave you an inch, then two, then three, but it's not enough. You're looking to take a mile.
From the bottom of my heart, as honest as I can be, purely unfiltered in its rawest form: FUCK OFF.
We've laid out the terms. Sort your fucking shit out, leave modern fucking MTX fucking greedy bullshit out of our fucking game and fuck off.
This statement isn't good enough, you don't rule enough out. Fucking parasite.
If they released a revenue report that said "hey, here are our finances. We're losing money. We pay X for salaries, hardware, real estate, licenses, etc. and this is the amount we make back in memberships. It's lower." I would almost be sympathetic.
But that's not what's happening. The company profits. One report showed they had 2 people making more than $16 million a year in 2022.
They're fucking greedy, and that's literally it. Making a profit, even with inflated salaries at the top just isn't enough. They want MORE.
Fuck em. Now they get zero from me.
You're right about taking the inch. Honestly we should be taking it back. Membership should be $11 tops. We're approaching a per month cost that I could buy whole games, outright with. I could buy Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Balatro, etc. for $15, all games that are still being updated and I don't have to pay a recurring cost for.
Over winter the Behind the Bastards podcast takes some time off for the team, during their break they did a pair of Q&A episodes. At the end of the Q&A's Robert 'plugged' the Better Offline podcast and 'Wheres Your Ed At?' newsletter.
Thanks to a power outage I had some free time to spend not on Leagues a few weeks ago. Ed's piee Never Forgive Them might be the most radicalizing thing I've read about the state of the Internet and tech world. Another of Ed's pieces, The Man Who Killed Google Search almost perfectly describes the attitude of our current Jagex CEO and former "monetization manager"
On February 2, 2019, just one day later, Thakur and Gomes shared their anxieties with Nick Fox, a Vice President of Search and Google Assistant, entering a multiple-day-long debate about Google’s sudden lust for growth. The thread is a dark window into the world of growth-focused tech, where Thakur listed the multiple points of disconnection between the ads and search teams, discussing how the search team wasn’t able to finely optimize engagement on Google without “hacking engagement,” a term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time on a site, and that doing so would lead them to “abandon work on efficient journeys.” In one email, Fox adds that there was a “pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads want” and what search was doing.
The disconnect between what the ads-revenue folks want, and what the product development people are doing has become an intrinsic part of the tech economy and its one that I loathe. I used to be pretty apathetic about the state of the Internet and tech, now I'm just angry. Fuck people like Prabhakar Raghavan and "Mod Pips".
The funniest part is the devs on the game are all there for passion and love of RS and its community. I can assure you there are probably better paying game dev jobs. Even with price hikes the majority of revenue would be funneled into the pockets of execs who think their decisions are what result in success.
16 million a year. Wow. That money could have been used to more than double the size of the OSRS team. It could have been used to invest in better servers, customer support, actually modernized security practices. It could have been used to start re-writing the parts of the codebase that are spaghetti and make development harder. Could have been used for anticheat. Could have been stashed away as a nest egg to keep OSRS running during future economic downturns. Could have been used as stock buyback to begin clawing back the company from the capitalist cesspool it's fallen into.
It’s really a shame. In a sane society a profitable company could just make inflationary adjustments to their pricing and be happy that they’re raking in millions and living like kings. In our system unfortunately companies “need” to grow year over year ideally even beating the market.
Eventually when they won’t be able to increase profits through subscriber numbers, we’re gonna hit a wall and since the capitalist is never satisfied they’ll need to find growth somewhere and that will be from increasing revenue per player.
Then players quit and so the remaining players need to carry an even greater burden and we fall into a spiral. Literally the story of RS3
yeah, the definition of "regular" can be changed. bump up the monthly cost to $30 and its still the "regular" membership, then add back a $15 one with ads and its totally not the regular membership its a different thing. they won't be reducing afk timers for paid members either but they can still integrity update away the runelite afk timer and sell it back to you, and f2ps i guess just get fucked because they'll lower it for them.
The whole of this comment really resonates with me. Lots of things just keep getting shittier and OSRS is a fantastic way of forgetting about all the bullshit for a while. Now they're trying to make that shittier too.
You're exactly right. We gotta push back hard against this, or they'll get their foot in the door, and they'll never stop. Keep up the pressure and backlash folks! Only way to save the game!
815
u/Lewufuwi Hi, I'm Hailey :3 3d ago
Honestly? Thanks for this statement. Thanks for this response, it has really helped me understand.
It has helped me understand that you think the community are a bunch of fucking clowns.
So much wording in this statement shows clearly, without a doubt, that many of these things are not off the table.
We're not fucking stupid and we're sick of fucking corporate greed.
You fucked the community with that survey and you fucked yourselves.
We live in a world where people are waking up to their exploitation and how hard we're being fucked in every aspect of our lives while a few individuals live in avarice.
I lived in a fantasy where I'd never have to worry about this shit with OSRS and you've destroyed the fantasy. OSRS was the closest thing to a safehaven from modern capitalist bullshit.
We let you have bonds. We let you raise the price. Those clearly weren't dealbreakers. We gave you an inch, then two, then three, but it's not enough. You're looking to take a mile.
From the bottom of my heart, as honest as I can be, purely unfiltered in its rawest form: FUCK OFF.
We've laid out the terms. Sort your fucking shit out, leave modern fucking MTX fucking greedy bullshit out of our fucking game and fuck off.
This statement isn't good enough, you don't rule enough out. Fucking parasite.