Runelite HD Shut Down

[FatalScroll]

In kind of a dick move in my opinion Jagex has contacted the Devs of Runelite to tell them to pull the plug the the day Runelite was set to be released. Their reasoning? The reveal that they have a similarly-themed graphical improvement project that is "relatively early in the exploration stages". Before returning to RS3 a few months ago, I was playing OSRS but that was more due to the fact that at the time OSRS had a mobile version when RS3 did not. I much prefer RS3 to OSRS.

 

Here's an excerpt from Reddit

 

"Yesterday, September 6, 2021, RuneLite HD would have been released. The code had been reviewed and bugs had been fixed - it was ready to go. You would have been playing with it right now. Yet, at the eleventh hour, Jagex contacted me asking me to take it down in light of the reveal that they have a similarly-themed graphical improvement project that is "relatively early in the exploration stages".

I offered a compromise of removing my project from RuneLite once they are ready to release theirs, in addition to allowing them collaborative control over the visual direction of my project. They declined outright.

So, it appears that this is the end. Approximately 2000 of hours of work over two years. A huge outpouring of support from all of you. I could never have imagined the overwhelmingly positive response I've had to this project.

I am beyond disappointed and frustrated with Jagex, and I am so very sorry that, after this long journey, I'm not able to share this project with you."

I did toy with Runelite when I was on my PC and thought it was a great app. Its just mind boggling to me that Jagex would ask them to pull the plug after 2000+ man hours going into the development of Runelite. Especially when their equivalent is still in the early stages so it'll probably be months before it comes out. The makers even offered to pull it when Jagexs was ready. The only logical conclusion I can come with for the reason of not letting them continue until it releases is that they want time for people to go without a tool pack to make theirs look better when it releases. If they have to compete with peoples expectations for it, most having used Runelite right up to release, players will think they did a bad job on it when it fails to live up to apps like Runelite, and lets be honest Jagex never seems to get things right the first time around.

It doesn't affect me really as I don't play OSRS anymore and with the release of RS3 mobile will probably never go back to it again, I just feel bad for the OSRS players. Just curious other peoples opinions on this matter?

[thegreatwha]

46 minutes ago, Fatal Zanik said:

The only logical conclusion I can come with for the reason of not letting them continue until it releases is that they want time for people to go without a tool pack to make theirs look better when it releases. If they have to compete with peoples expectations for it, most having used Runelite right up to release, players will think they did a bad job on it when it fails to live up to apps like Runelite, and lets be honest Jagex never seems to get things right the first time around.

No doubt it comes down to money, and other issues. Let alone copyright infringements or whatever, it sounds like the developer was likey under the gun the whole time and Jagex decided to finally pull the trigger. I'm sure if the Runelite developer would have gone forward with his release he knows very well he would have been up shit creek with legal troubles. No doubt they presented this to him in some form or fashion. 

 

 

[Cam L]

I'm not super familiar with RuneLite, although my understanding is that it functions similarly to Alt1 in that it provides general quality of life improvements for the game without doing anything that's actually very game-breaking. In that sense, I'm not really sure how RuneLite is a competing product to OSRS itself - obviously RuneLite is free, I don't know how they make money, but I don't really see how they could be taking money away from Jagex - so I don't really understand what incentive Jagex would have to shut it down over this specific thing, given that Jagex had declined to shut them down over the services that they already provide. At the end of the day, though, it's business. I can understand why they may want to shut it down over fears that the RuneLite product may be superior to their own. You don't want your customers to view you as incompetent or your product as inferior to others (although that ship sailed a long ass time ago with Jagex lmao). For that reason, if I was Jagex and I had the power to shut down RuneLite or Alt1 at the snap of the finger, I would've done it a long time ago. The absolute smartest thing for Jagex to do would be to shut this stuff down and hire the people building these tools onto their own staff, but for whatever reason Jagex won't do that. 

[Jaybear]

Sucks that they lost all that time for nothing, but I mean this is the risk of playing on a third party client. None of it is really allowed to begin with, they just tolerate it because majority of the playerbase uses it

[Deathcon]

24 minutes ago, Cam L said:

although my understanding is that it functions similarly to Alt1 in that it provides general quality of life improvements for the game without doing anything that's actually very game-breaking. In that sense, I'm not really sure how RuneLite is a competing product to OSRS itself - obviously RuneLite is free, I don't know how they make money, but I don't really see how they could be taking money away from Jagex - so I don't really understand what incentive Jagex would have to shut it down over this specific thing, given that Jagex had declined to shut them down over the services that they already provide. At the end of the day, though, it's business. I can understand why they may want to shut it down over fears that the RuneLite product may be superior to their own.

Among the group of 3rd-party clients Runelite was one of the OP basically gamebreaking ones in its earlier times,  tons of features that gave users more of an advantage.

Still kind of an asshole move to have those people work on something for a few years knowingly before telling them C&D

[Devin]

13 hours ago, Deathcon said:

Among the group of 3rd-party clients Runelite was one of the OP basically gamebreaking ones in its earlier times,  tons of features that gave users more of an advantage.

Still kind of an asshole move to have those people work on something for a few years knowingly before telling them C&D

 

100%

[Red Rat17]

I'm not fully understanding why they would do this considering that they still make money if people subscribe and just play on Runelite, but when a suit wants to be stupid, they get to be. 

 

But at the same time, I get that you have to draw a line somewhere. It sounds like Runelite was told to cut certain features previously because of the unfair advantages, but I digress. I don't see the benefit specially jagex gets for people using their client, but its their product, and they can control it I guess with the current laws. 

[Bobby]

Jagex backtracked so fast after yesterdays reddit post sat on the front page of r/all....

 

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/third-party-hd-clients-statement-update?oldschool=1

 

Needless to say they could have done a lot better in handling this. They reap what they sew. A huge PR disaster

 

Edit: it was only in regards to the 3d client that 117 was working on. The normal runelite client wasnt at issue here. They may eventually ban 3rd party clients in favor of the steam client they are working on... i hope not.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Bobby

[Rafi]

9 hours ago, Bobby said:

Jagex backtracked so fast after yesterdays reddit post sat on the front page of r/all....

 

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/third-party-hd-clients-statement-update?oldschool=1

 

Needless to say they could have done a lot better in handling this. They reap what they sew. A huge PR disaster

 

Edit: it was only in regards to the 3d client that 117 was working on. The normal runelite client wasnt at issue here. They may eventually ban 3rd party clients in favor of the steam client they are working on... i hope not.

That’s not backpedaling so much as saying “I see that this upset you.”

[FatalScroll]

On 9/7/2021 at 8:24 PM, thegreatwha said:

No doubt it comes down to money, and other issues. Let alone copyright infringements or whatever, it sounds like the developer was likey under the gun the whole time and Jagex decided to finally pull the trigger. I'm sure if the Runelite developer would have gone forward with his release he knows very well he would have been up shit creek with legal troubles. No doubt they presented this to him in some form or fashion. 

 

 

 

I dont think it really has to do with that as it wasnt just RuneLite. It was sent to a few clients I believe, Runelite was just the major one.

 

On 9/7/2021 at 8:59 PM, Cam L said:

For that reason, if I was Jagex and I had the power to shut down RuneLite or Alt1 at the snap of the finger, I would've done it a long time ago.

 

Im not sure on what grounds Jagex could shut down Alt1 as it in no way touches the game aside from it looks at your screen and provides an overlay. I know a lot of people think the Clue Program of Alt1 is unfair but if your going to say that its unfair then one could argue all websites that provide the answer to the clues including the official Wiki are unfair.

[thegreatwha]

16 minutes ago, Fatal Zanik said:

I dont think it really has to do with that as it wasnt just RuneLite. It was sent to a few clients I believe, Runelite was just the major one.

Yeah, from what I understood (from related articles and in the most general sense) it had something to do with related development. I only figure there may be some allusive relation with development copyright.

 

But hey, whatever the case may be, it turns out Jagex did a bit of a 180.

https://www.pcgamer.com/Runelite-HD-Jagex-reverses-decision/

[FatalScroll]

5 hours ago, thegreatwha said:

Yeah, from what I understood (from related articles and in the most general sense) it had something to do with related development. I only figure there may be some allusive relation with development copyright.

 

But hey, whatever the case may be, it turns out Jagex did a bit of a 180.

https://www.pcgamer.com/Runelite-HD-Jagex-reverses-decision/

 

 I love when the voice of the people is successful!