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Dragonwilds Dev Addresses Price Controversy

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On April 20, 2025

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Summary

The creative director for Dragonwilds defends the $29.99 price based on player feedback during the testing phase.
Dragonwilds offers 20 to 30 hours of mainline content, additional exploration, and more crafting.
Jagex wanted to make Dragonwilds a complete experience, leading to the decision to sell it for a fixed cost.

The creative director behind RuneScape: Dragonwilds has defended the game’s $29.99 price point, which has caused a bit of a stir among RuneScape fans. Jagex’s co-op survival spin-off garnered a lot of excitement upon its surprise announcement and subsequent shadow-dropping, but that enthusiasm started to wane for some people once they noticed the price. While RuneScape: Dragonwilds is far from the most expensive game out there, it hasn’t escaped comparisons to some cheaper titles.

Jagex announced RuneScape: Dragonwilds on March 31, promising a closer look to come on April 15. When that day rolled around, the studio did more than just release a deep dive into the title. Dragonwilds entered early access on the same day, but in a break from previous RuneScape titles, it came at a premium.

RuneScape Dragonwilds: Early Access Roadmap and Upcoming Features Explained

RuneScape: Dragonwilds has a ton of content planned for the rest of its early access period.

In an interview with PCGamesN, Dragonwilds‘ creative director, Rick Turek, explained how the decision to sell the game as a premium title came from the desire to make something different from previous RuneScape titles. Both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape are free-to-play but have paid memberships that offer additional content. According to Turek, Jagex wanted Dragonwilds to be “something you can complete” instead of a continually updated MMO, so it made more sense to sell it at a fixed cost. However, some fans have taken exception to just how much that fixed cost is, especially in light of similar titles’ cheaper prices. Most notably, Valheim goes for under $20, which some players have pointed to when questioning Dragonwilds‘ $30 asking price.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds Dev Says Its Price Is Based on Player Feedback

Despite this pushback, Turek defended the game’s price, saying it actually came from playtester data. According to Turek, Jagex asked players during its testing phase what they would pay for Dragonwilds based on what they’d experienced so far, and based the title’s cost on that. Of course, previous Jagex price surveys have not always gone over well. Earlier this year, players review bombed Old School RuneScape after a controversial survey that hinted at some wildly unpopular future pricing options, although the company promised they’d avoid some of the more contentious ideas presented in the questionnaire.

Turek also justified Dragonwilds‘ pricing by pointing to the amount of content it offers. He claims there’s roughly 20 to 30 hours’ worth of mainline content and more beyond that if players want to explore and build more. How fans will feel about the price once more people start diving into it is uncertain for now, but some controversy remains. RuneScape isn’t the only game to run into cost-related criticism, either. Nintendo has faced plenty of backlash as Mario Kart World will cost roughly $100 in some regions, and recent rumors around GTA 6 put it in a similar boat. It’ll be interesting to see how audiences respond to these trends and what they will mean for the broader industry.