Jagex has “paused” development of its RuneScape community servers project, Zanaris, resulting in an unspecified number of redundancies.
The studio itself didn’t directly acknowledge the layoffs in its statement, instead stressing to players the impact of the changes on its games and community.
“The incredible talent behind the project have been redistributed across Jagex or directly moved to Old School to help with ongoing improvements and exciting new initiatives,” the statement said, although players familiar with the development team noted some names were missing from the sign-off at the end of the statement, including lead game designer Mod Jack and principal game designer Mod Timbo (thanks, Eurogamer).
Shortly afterwards, a player noted Mod Timbo’s X account, @jagextimbo, had disappeared, and a mod working on the RuneScape subreddit responded to say they “felt [it was] right” to confirm that “there have unfortunately been job reductions at Jagex.”
“It felt right to drop in on this and provide some level of comment to what’s going on as soon as I could. It will be limited, with respect to those involved and their privacy, as I hope you can understand,” explained moderator Mod Hooli.
“Yes, there have unfortunately been job reductions at Jagex. These have been made as part of changes in a company restructure as Jagex puts more emphasis on RuneScape games and community growth.
“The majority of roles are from non-game dev and non-player-facing areas. There are some exceptions within the RS team as part the company’s focus on a streamlined development approach.”
Hooli added that there was no change in direction or the roadmap of RuneScape 3, and the team was “still committed to growing this game and investing in it.”
“What matters most right now are the people affected by this change. The studio’s focus is to support those affected, as is mine,” they concluded. “Now is the time we put them first and do everything we can to help them out. Hope that provides what little context I can offer.”
In the first five months of 2025 alone, around 2200 developers have lost their jobs, with cuts and closures at Freejam, Splash Damage, Piranha Games, Jar of Sparks, Ubisoft, ProbablyMonsters, Iron Galaxy, Sumo Group, Liquid Sword, NetEase Games, Toast Interactive, Night School Studio, Striking Distance, Until Dawn remake developers, Ballistic Moon, Eidos Montréal, PlaySide, AppLovin, Nerial, Reality Labs, and, most recently, there have been multiple cuts at EA, including Respawn, and People Can Fly.