Old School RuneScape (OSRS), an MMORPG title that launched nearly two decades ago, has recently closed a community poll that was voting on the implementation of “Partnerships.” In essence, Partnerships revolve around the idea that some new items and features would first become available to “Partners” of Old School RuneScape, before being released to the general population.
This is nothing new, as last year the developers of RuneScape “partnered” with Twitch to allow Prime members early access to a new purple skin color. Once the promotional event had ended, they then allowed all players to use the pigment.
The RuneScape community didn’t like the concept back then, and they still don’t like it now. A subreddit dedicated to OSRS has slammed the idea repeatedly over the past week. Many users are claiming that this brings the game one step closer to having full blown microtransactions. Others see this as “microtransactions via a third party,” since players who have paid to be partners with another company are rewarded with exclusive items.
Thankfully Jagex, the developers of OSRS, have stated they will not add any new content to the game without first polling the community. This is accomplished with an in-game voting booth where members can cast their virtual ballots. Thanks to this voting system, most of the community is happy with any changes made to the nostalgic game.
The poll was set to close on Monday the 8th, however early polling results were so negative Jagex decided to close the booths early. A formal statement from the company indicates that not only were the polls extremely one-sided, but the general hatred around the topic forced them to abandon the idea. They state that they were in no way attempting to add microtransactions to the game and are disappointed that the community thought they would do such a thing.
Of course, they did exactly that with Runescape 3, a move which many claim stunted the growth of the title. OSRS is a Free to Play title, but it offers a monthly subscription which adds hundreds of hours of extra content. The fact that any sort of monetization was being discussed when the title already includes a monthly subscription was likely the reason for such a backlash from the community.
OSRS is available on PC, as well as Android and Apple mobile devices.