VC funds bring in four new board members
UK studio Jagex has made an unexpected agreement with a number of VC firms to help fund future projects.
The Cambridge-based developer is the UK’s largest independent, and has built a passionate online user-base amounting to millions. It is also a regular recruiter of new talent, and recently established its own publishing business. In 2009 the firm’s turnover was put at £32.2 million.
Jagex was presumed to be cash-rich enough to fund future projects in line with the studio’s standards and scale of ambition. That may still be the case, though it is now unclear.
The developer has accepted new funds from three VC groups; Insight Venture Partners, Spectrum Equity Investors and The Raine Group.
The price of the investment, in terms of cash and equity, was not revealed.
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Jagex will now have four more heads on its board of directors.
From Spectrum Equity comes Chris Mitchell and Jim Quagliaroli, while The Raine Group has appointed Brandon Gardner and John Salter to the table.
Insight Venture Partners, whose new investment is not its first for Jagex, keeps Jeff Horing and Alex Crisses as directors of the company.
Mark Gerhard keeps his job as CEO, Jagex said.
“Insight has been part of the Jagex family for a number of years and it has been a real pleasure to serve alongside them on the Jagex board”, said Gerhard.
“Both Spectrum and Raine bring a wealth of expertise and it gives me great delight to be able to welcome them to the Jagex team. It’s a great privilege to serve alongside such esteemed individuals and their wider organisations.”
Gerhard said the investment will be “hugely benefit both the Jagex team and our loyal community and I’m confident that Jagex will continue to go from strength to strength. I fully expect that the collective experience of the shareholder base will be highly advantageous as we embark on our next chapter of growth.”
Jagex became the UK’s largest independent studio following the breakthrough success of its flagship game RuneScape, an MMO which in 2009 was said to service over 100 million players.
The studio had aborted plans for the game’s follow-up, Mechscape, though it is believed some of the game’s assets and tech will still be used in future projects.
In my opinion Jagex is a company the UK industry can be really proud of. Anyone lucky enough to have visited the studio and met the people who work there and run things will know what I mean. The projects and ideas as well as their approach to doing business is a real eye opener. If this VC money is being used to make them bigger and better then it is going to be scary to think how good this studio can become.
In an era when people seem to be constantly calling the end to UK games development It is great that Jagex have 100 million people playing their games and are recognised globally as a World Class Studio.
The above commnenter must not be a RuneScape player. If you were, you'd know the terrible things Jagex have done to the game and its community in exchange for more profits (including this deal). Out of the 100 million 'players', probably more than 30% are robots who farm gold as well as real gold farmers. Yet Jagex refuses to ban these players in exchange for their subscription. At any minute, there are 5x more people on botting forums than the official Jagex run forums. I would warn any potential investor from investing in Jagex until they recognize and seriously deal with the already epidemic cheating problem. Ultimately, cheating will destroy Jagex's most profitable game.
I've been in the industry for 15 years and one thing I know is that you can't please all of the people all of the time.
Take Football Manager for instance, every time a new version comes out you get 1000's of people on the forums complaining about a new feature or a design/UI change. People claim that it is now too commercial and the original spirit of the game is lost etc but every year it sells more copies than ever. The debate could rage on forever on whether increased sales is a sign of success or not with regards to improved gameplay but in raw business/economic terms it has to be seen as such.
When I first visited the Jagex studios about 5 years ago I was surprised at the number of people they had simply dedicated to policing Runescape and stopping the cheating you mention. It doesn't surprise me that it goes on with the regularity and volumes you mention because success will always bring this element with it. What I do know with certainty is that the people at that studio are the biggest fans of RS. These guys aren't corporate suits, they are into games as much as you and I so I would imagine that if they are aware of what you mention then they are dealing with it as best as they can. Seriously I dont think they are the types to just let the cheating go on for commercial reasons.
What I like about Jagex is that they aren't a production line studio, they encourage and promote original ideas and as we saw with Mechscape they will not ship out anything sub standard to just make a quick buck. In fact they lost millions with Mechscape which showed that they were unwilling to put commercial interests in front of their own desire to create games they would want to play and be proud of.
Adrian, what you said is very true for the Jagex FIVE YEARS AGO. But you would be foolish to believe that today and invest in Jagex today. In those 5 years, RuneScape has peaked and declined greatly. Jagex lost its game-loving workforce you mentioned and hired a suit for CEO. The games' founders and owners, the Gowers, pretty much sold half of their company to investors. (this being just the latest wave) They have stopped caring. In recent days since this article, Jagex had stopped permenent bans altogether and now offering all past banned accounts to be bought back for money. No other MMO out there have such an unethical option for cheaters to just buy their account back, and yet we find that as an "original idea" from Jagex. I've played this game for 9 years, and as it stands now there is no redemption to it. There is simply no hope for an MMO where 30-40% of players are robots and the gaming company would rather take subscription money from them than off a dwindling legit player base.
Jagex' public relations have gone down the drain. Generally 100% of players "know" for a fact that Jagex' decisions are not made with the players or customers in thought; rather the money and the Board of Investors. RuneScape is now, at any given moment, infested with 80% or higher of "bots" (scripted programs which login and play) according to all of the researchable sources you find (except for Jagex and their representatives, who of course completely reject and deny the situation's existance). You can deny the standing allegations as much as you please, but either way maybe you should take a look at the official RuneScape feedback forums.
http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/c=E9TJRmpppdU/forums.ws?15,16
These posts are made by none other than the currently PAYING members of Jagex Ltd's games(although the paying factor may be discontinued as of short, given more members are cancelling their subscriptions daily than ever before). As you will see, the vast majority of those who take the time to comment do so out of dissappointment and dissatisfaction regarding the direction Jagex' decisions have been obviously biased towards the past two years.
Either you're some ignoramus Jagex suck-up, or you're being paid to support them on these threads. You could be a little useful and try not to make it so obvious but we all know what's really up.
The link to the official feedback forum in the post above has some error and did not display correctly; you can copy + paste the link in the post above, or simply click on the one here for the ease of it.
http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/c=E9TJRmpppdU/forums.ws?15,16
The link doesn't display properly with the format of this website. Copy the entire link(which includes the non-highlighted ,16" at the end of it to be led to the specific feedback forum.
The link to the official feedback forum in the post above has some error and did not display correctly; you can copy + paste the link in the post above, or simply click on the one here for the ease of it.
http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/c=E9TJRmpppdU/forums.ws?15,16
