Here’s a surprise for all the fans of the classic MMORPG game RuneScape – the game will launch on Steam later this fall. According to the announcement, RuneScape will become available on Steam on October 14th but will not include Old School RuneScape at launch. The classic version of the game is scheduled to be released on the most popular PC games launcher sometime in 2021.
After the transition to Steam, RuneScape will retain its free-to-play model and will allow users to use the same accounts and play with friends who use the usual web launcher. This transition is mainly targeted towards new players who have never tried the game before and are looking for something fresh to play while browsing Steam library of games.
Jagex CEO Phil Mansell shared his view about this new release:
“Jagex is on a mission to bring the RuneScape universe to more players globally. Following our games’ arrival on mobile stores, we are now expanding the availability of the desktop versions. Making them accessible to the Steam community is an important step in achieving this goal. We’re excited to see RuneScape debut on Steam from October 14th and look forward to Old School RuneScape’s arrival next year, as we enable even more gamers to access and explore our rich and engaging living game worlds.”
Releasing a free-to-play MMORPG on Steam proved to be a success for many other developers. Destiny 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Albion Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and many more popular genre titles are getting a lot of players through Steam. It’s also worth reminding that ArenaNet recently announced that they’ll be bringing Guild Wars 2 there as well, so Jagex decided they want a piece of this huge audience too.
The news arrives just in time for the 20th anniversary of the game. We hope that we’ll get even more news about RuneScape in the coming weeks. Who knows, maybe with this transition Jagex will finally upgrade the technical side of the game…
