Long-running free-to-play MMORPG Runescape recently revamped player-owned housing to offer players more options and customization. And to help with that, developer Jagex added some paid party cosmetics to the MMO for homes. But these cosmetic packs cost $10 or more and were limited in a way that frustrated the community, leading to the studio relenting after receiving a lot of feedback.
On August 3, Jagex announced a few new paid cosmetic bundles that would work with the game’s revamped player housing. In Jagex’s own words, these new bundles, including a 400 Runecoin /$12 pack that contains balloons, bunting, and other decorations to celebrate the game’s 25-year anniversary, worked “a little differently” compared to other cosmetic packs the company has sold. The big difference is that these packs contain a “set number of furniture items.” In other words, you aren’t buying a balloon that can be placed as much as you want, but a specific number of balloons. And if you want more, Jagex had a solution: Buy more packs.
As you can expect, this didn’t go over well with a large portion of the community, who deemed these new cosmetics to be one-time-use items and complained that this was a big change for the game to make. Many were fine with Jagex selling cosmetic decorations for housing, but weren’t fans of how it was being done. Players wanted these bundles to come with blueprints so they could craft the items and make more of them, instead of having to buy multiple packs to fill their homes with balloons or other decorations. Some were just annoyed that their characters couldn’t craft such basic items. Others were worried that their storage space would be filled in the future with items that, if deleted, couldn’t be re-crafted later.
The backlash was so swift and consistent that the very next day, on Tuesday, Jagex directly addressed the situation and promised changes were coming.
“There’s been some back and forth in the community on our first ever drop of POH Marketplace cosmetics,” said Jagex lead community manager Anvil. “We’ve been having a chat, and we agree that there’s a better way to offer these items up.”
Moving forward, cosmetic bundles for housing decorations and furniture will not contain one-time-use items and instead will include blueprints so players can craft copies. Jagex also said it will issue refunds to people who bought multiple packs already and will not let future players do so as it rolls back its plans and implements these changes. And the recently added cosmetic packs will have blueprints added to them, too.
“Player-Owned House marketplace items are still very much a new area that we’re exploring,” said Anvil. “But it’s important to note that none of these explorations are setting a direction in stone from the get-go. Per-item sales for POH won’t be part of that direction, and future POH offerings will be approached with a ‘buy once, unlock forever’ mentality.”
While many Runescape players are happy that Jagex listened and reacted so quickly, others aren’t happy that it took a huge community pile-on to convince the studio that this was a bad idea. I have to admit, it does seem wild that anyone at the studio thought this would go over well or be accepted by players. Regardless, it seems that moving forward, players won’t be forced to buy multiple packs of balloons just to decorate their in-game homes to their hearts’ content.
