Players are in an uproar after an anonymous Jagex employee, speaking to Pink News, accused the RuneScape and Old School RuneScape (OSRS) dev of deliberately curtailing its Pride Month celebrations in response to the American government's assault on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The announcement that RuneScape and OSRS wouldn't be running—or would at least be dramatically scaling back—their Pride content apparently came from new CEO Jon Bellamy in April. Bellamy, who was appointed Jagex CEO in March, caused a rupture between staff and Jagex management with an announcement that the company would be more-or-less skipping Pride in order to focus on "what players wanted."
Staff were upset, and noted that a great deal of the work for Pride content was either already completed or a very light lift. Some asked to volunteer outside of work hours to implement the content.
At a Q&A session with staff held the following week, Bellamy apologised for his initial communication but didn't relent, noting that the world "is getting stranger, more troubling, less moral, I would argue. Games and studios are being cancelled because of content that is perceived to be 'woke' or representative. The pendulum is swinging back in a way we didn’t expect."
Perhaps paradoxically, Bellamy acknowledged that RuneScape and OSRS' status as safe spaces for the queer community were—in a time of reactionary backlash—more important than ever, and pitched the rollback of Pride events as a way of preserving that.
Bellamy argued that his role was to "ensure the business is protected against those that would wish us harm," and that Pride content was "now controversial in a way it didn’t used to be and that controversy now brings more risk than it did previously, risk that I’m personally responsible to protect against."
That meant no Pride events in OSRS, while RuneScape would simply rerun an old Tales of Pride event with no added content. Community-organised Pride events are still permitted.
The anonymous employee who spoke to Pink News accused Jagex of "catering to American conservatism," with the move, despite Jagex being a UK studio (though its owner, CVC Capital, juggles huge investments in the USA, while both RuneScape and OSRS have significant US playerbases).
The reversal of Pride events were seen as being an attempt to kowtow to the Trump administration's ongoing war on DEI initiatives across American society, much as has been done by numerous other corporations in the past few months.
Jagex staff penned an open letter to management in May, reiterating their desire to implement new Pride content and pointing out that previous events "did not translate to a loss of revenue" in spite of "a vocal minority engaging in bigoted behaviour online."
A response from Jagex execs allowed employees to include some Pride content on a timer, but admonished staff that "Our job is not to use the game as an outlet for our own views, but to craft worlds that serve our players, offering immersion, escape and meaning."
Meanwhile, players haven't taken the decision to skip Pride well. "Thank you Jagex for validating the effectiveness of harassment and threats of violence," reads a popular post on the OSRS subreddit, sardonically asking other players "How will you be wielding harassment and death threats to better OSRS now that this is a Jagex-approved method of feedback?"
That's pretty representative of the overall response. "The only problem is the anti-woke movement," writes one player in response. "We're just trying to be supportive of people in our community that consistently face hatred from others, and some weirdos think that is problematic. Some people are just awful, and more are also awful for allowing it to happen."
Thank you Jagex for validating the effectiveness of harassment and threats of violence from r/2007scape
Some players point out that Pride events had become such a rote part of the RuneScape calendar that not doing them is liable to cause more of a blow-up than keeping them going: "It's kind of funny, the pride events had become so much of a nothingburger that not doing them might unironically cause more controversy and bad press for the game than catering to a group of people that either don't even play Runescape or are so addicted they not going to suddenly stop playing because a new clothing item has a trans flag texture."
Meanwhile, I reached out to Jagex to ask for comment on the situation, and a spokesperson told me: "Jagex is a strong supporter and ally of the LGBTQ+ community, with a firm belief that our games should be a safe space for all our players and celebrates people of all identities. In April, we took the difficult decision to pause work on new in-game Pride content for 2025 and communicated this with our teams. Our development focus is on crafting worlds that serve what our players have been asking us for, offering immersion, escape, and meaning.
"Our existing Pride content from previous years remains live in-game, as was always our intention, and we are proud to support our community-led Pride marches, which have been taking place this week. Alongside this, we’re working with our internal DEI committee to explore broader, more meaningful ways to celebrate Pride across Jagex, including possible partnerships and charitable support. Our goal is to listen, learn, and find better ways to support all players and employees."
