Jagex Hit by Layoffs, “Pauses” Planned RuneScape ‘Project Zanaris’

As far as MMORPGs go, RuneScape has consistently been one of the best and most popular ones, but while the game is still there, the future of the company behind the major hit title is in jeopardy.

Namely, news of potential issues within Jagex is coming to us, and there is a lot of uncertainty about the future, although the developers are reassuring us that things will be fine.

As you will see, a recent blog post from Jagex confirmed the delay of the planned Project Zanaris, but what is more worrying is that it comes amidst news of layoffs within the company.

In a recent blog post, the team behind RuneScape confirmed that work on Project Zanaris has been put on hold indefinitely. The project was supposed to bring community servers to Old School RuneScape, but that won’t be the case.

The post claims that there were mixed feelings about the whole projects – some loved it, some did not think it was the right way to go – and in light of that, as well as the fact that the Old School RuneScape projects has other issues, they’ve decided to pause work on that and focus on other areas.

And while the blog post provides us with more details about the company’s plans, they can be summed up by the following aspects, which are going to be the focus of future updates:

• Faster, More Creative Events & Content Ideas: The Zanaris team had lots of new gameplay ideas and incredible concepts for events and features. Rather than shelving these, we’ll explore how we can introduce some of these innovations through carefully curated temporary worlds. This means we can give you fresh experiences without impacting the OSRS core you love.
• Improved Server Infrastructure: We’ll be using the cloud server technology developed for Zanaris to enhance our existing game worlds. This means greater reliability during peak periods.
• Wider Region Support: We’re exploring options to bring an improved service to underserved regions outside our core world locations (UK, US, Germany, Australia).
• More Engaging Customisation: Zanaris brought us many customisation options that can now be introduced to main OSRS worlds or special event servers. These improvements will allow us to create more exciting time limited events and experimental content for you to enjoy.
• Strengthening the Roadmap: Members of the Zanaris team will be actively contributing to key initiatives on the OSRS roadmap, helping to enhance major content and support the game’s long-term development.

And while all of this seems fine and dandy, the fact is that this blog post comes amidst news of confirmed layoffs within the company, some of which even sparked a recent Reddit discussion about Jagex’s decisions.

And while the company has stated that the layoffs won’t influence the gaming aspect of their work, as the “vast majority of proposed role reductions are within non-game development and non-player-facing functions,” they have not revealed the total amount of layoffs in the company and it seems that this will have more impact than originally claimed.

Of course, the cancellation of Zanaris might just be a case of unfortunate timing – it might have happened regardless of the layoffs – but with many companies (and we have also reported on that) facing financial difficulties and firing developers, as well as the issues related to the use of AI, we cannot shake off the feeling that there is more here.

This probably won’t have any major repercussions in the short-term scope, but it remains to be seen how Jagex (and other companies) will recover in the future; we just hope that the devoted and diligent developers, as well as the players, won’t end up being victims of cooperative management.

Of course, be sure to keep following us for all the news and updates.

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