Is RuneScape still popular in 2026?
Yes, and the healthy half of the franchise is the version Jagex restored from a 2007 server backup. On a Sunday in early August 2025, Old School RuneScape passed 240,000 people logged in at the same moment, with player screenshots putting the peak at 240,851. The game had crossed 200,000 concurrent players only weeks earlier.
Mainline RuneScape, the version players call RuneScape 3, runs at roughly 30,000 concurrent players by the same reporting. That is a gap of about eight to one between a 2007 snapshot and the modern game it was copied from.
The commercial side agrees. When Carlyle announced on February 9, 2024 that it had agreed to sell Jagex, it described a community of 2.4 million active subscribers and one million free-to-play users, sitting on more than 300 million lifetime RuneScape accounts and $1.5 billion in lifetime franchise revenue. A browser game from the era of Neopets and other click-and-wait virtual worlds is not supposed to be setting attendance records two decades later.
Who owns Jagex now?
Jagex is owned by CVC Capital Partners Fund VIII and Haveli Investments. Carlyle announced the agreed sale on February 9, 2024, and the two buyers have run the studio since.
CVC is a European private equity firm with approximately 188 billion euros of assets under management, better known outside gaming for its stakes in soccer and rugby competitions. Haveli is an Austin firm whose chief investment officer, Brian Sheth, was quoted on the deal. Neither side disclosed a price, though PocketGamer.biz reported that Reuters valued the sale at as much as 1 billion pounds, about $1.25 billion.
The seller was Carlyle, which had held Jagex since 2021 through Carlyle Partners VII and Carlyle Europe Technology Partners IV, a 1.35 billion euro fund. At the time of the sale Carlyle described Jagex as a Cambridge company employing more than 700 people worldwide, with Phil Mansell as chief executive.
So the plain answer to who owns RuneScape: two private equity firms, one European and one Texan, neither of which was anywhere near the game when it launched.
How Jagex kept getting sold
The current owners are the sixth set in roughly a decade, a churn PocketGamer.biz laid out when the 2024 deal landed.
Insight Venture Partners, a New York firm, took a majority share in 2012. In 2016 the studio passed to Hongtou, a Chinese investment vehicle later absorbed by Zhongji Holdings, which renamed itself Fukong Interactive Entertainment. In 2020 it moved again, to Macarthur Fortune Holdings, a US asset manager. Carlyle bought it in 2021, a deal PocketGamer.biz put at $530 million. Then CVC and Haveli in 2024.
Reported prices along that chain are inconsistent, partly because several of the transactions were never officially disclosed and partly because the figures were reported by different outlets working from different filings.
What matters for players is the pattern rather than any single number. Every owner arrives with a return to earn and an exit to plan, and on a subscription game the lever closest to hand is the subscription.
Why Jagex dug a 2007 backup out of storage
In early 2013, Jagex went digging through old server backups because forum threads kept circling back to the 2006 and 2007 builds of the game. On February 15, 2013 the studio posted that it had recovered a complete, verified snapshot of RuneScape from August 2007. It also admitted that it had changed its backup systems that October, so nothing after August 2007 survived in a usable state.
Rather than simply switch the old servers on, Jagex put it to a vote, in the same spirit as an earlier poll on restoring the Wilderness and free trade that had drawn 1.4 million votes. The thresholds were blunt. At 50,000 votes the old servers would return with no content updates and an extra fee of around $15. At 250,000 they would get a small development team and roughly $5 extra. At 500,000 they would get a dedicated team and no extra fee at all.
The old servers came back as Old School RuneScape, with no surcharge and a dedicated team. The rule that players vote on new content dates from that same promise.
How Old School RuneScape outgrew RuneScape 3
The 2007 build was meant to be a nostalgia annex. It became the main game instead.
Part of that is combat. The modern version had moved to an ability-driven system, the Evolution of Combat, and a large share of the audience never accepted it. Part of it is governance, because content in Old School RuneScape has to clear a player poll, so the game changes slowly and in public. Part of it is simply that the older client is lighter, easier to explain to a newcomer, and runs on a phone.
The result is the trick Counter-Strike pulled on Half-Life, where the offshoot ends up bigger than the thing it came from. By August 2025 Old School RuneScape was running above 240,000 concurrent players against roughly 30,000 for RuneScape 3.
Jagex maintains both, plus a co-op survival game set in the same world called RuneScape: Dragonwilds. An MMO that outlasted Second Life and the first metaverse rush managed it by shipping a copy of its own past.
What RuneScape membership costs in 2026
Membership is $14.99 a month or $131.88 a year in the United States, following an increase Jagex announced on March 10, 2026. In the UK it is 10.99 pounds a month, up by a pound.
That is the third increase in four years. In May 2022 membership was $12.49 a month or $79.99 a year. In September 2024 it moved to $13.99 and $99.48. The 2026 change took the monthly price to $14.99, level with World of Warcraft in the US, and pushed the annual plan up by more than $32 in a single step. The six-month plan was dropped, which Jagex presented as simplifying the options.
Totaled up, the annual price has risen more than 60 percent since May 2022 while the monthly price has risen about 20 percent. The free tier still exists, and Carlyle counted a million people on it in 2024, so trying RuneScape costs nothing.
Players have noticed the direction of travel. PCGamesN framed its report on the 2026 increase around the question of when the hikes stop.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Old School RuneScape bigger than RuneScape 3?
Yes, by a wide margin. In August 2025 Old School RuneScape peaked above 240,000 concurrent players while mainline RuneScape sat near 30,000, a gap of roughly eight to one. Both are made by Jagex and both are covered by the same membership.
Can you still play RuneScape for free?
Yes. Both games keep a free tier with a reduced set of skills, quests and areas. Carlyle counted one million free-to-play users alongside 2.4 million paying subscribers when it agreed to sell Jagex in February 2024.
Is Old School RuneScape the same game as the 2007 original?
It started as one. Jagex recovered a complete backup of RuneScape as it stood in August 2007 and relaunched it as a separate game. Years of new content have gone in since, but each addition has to pass a player poll first, which is why it still plays like the older game.