Jagex Pull the Plug on Old School RuneScape Fan Client With Better Graphics at 11th Hour

Jagex, developer of the adventure MMO Old School RuneScape, has announced that it will be updating its guidelines about what is and is not allowed for unofficial clients. This decision has been made in light of their decision to contact developers of third-party clients which change the visuals of the game, in the last few days.

This news came on the heels of an announcement by a developer known as 117, that they had been asked to take down their HD client, which was due to launch on 7th of September. Named RuneLite HD, it had been in development for two years, and would have changed how the ground and water textures looked, as well as adding backgrounds that weren't just blank.

Old School Runescape requires a client to run, and there are three official ones available. There are some unofficial third-party clients, such as OSBuddy and RuneLite, the latter of which being an open-source client which RuneLite HD was built upon.

According to a reddit post by 117, Jagex requested the removal because it is working on its own similarly-themed graphical improvement project. It is apparently "relatively early in the exploration stages" - so not confirmed as even in active development at this time.

Jagex released a blog clarifying their stance on third-party HD clients, which included an email sent to developers of "known HD projects" asking them to shut down projects by 20th of September.

Needless to say, fans on the game subreddit are not happy about how sudden this happened, just before RuneLite HD released. Popular help community subreddit r/OSRSProTips has gone private with this statement shown to those who aren't approved members:

I cannot in good conscience cultivate a community in which new players are encouraged to play a game whose developers so blatantly and brazenly hate its community. It's becoming more apparent that Old School RuneScape is not a priority for Jagex. If it's not a priority for them, then the efforts of community helpers are best spent on other games that have competent management.

There has even been an in-game protest against the decision.

Of course, we don't know how high up this decision came from, or exactly how long ago the decision was made before announcement. We do, however, know that it was not the community managers' decision, so we encourage you to not direct your ire towards them. They may have been as surprised by this decision as the playerbase, and are just relaying the company line.

Here are some in-progress screenshots of how RuneLite HD would have looked: