With the recent Squeal of Fortune updates put out by JaGEx into RuneScape, many players are feeling frustrated that their complaints are not being listened to. Allow me to clear the air on that: they aren’t. JaGEx knows the players are unhappy about the Squeal of Fortune update, but unfortunately JaGEx has no say. Insight Venture Partners are the ones behind these updates and they frankly do not care what you have to say as long as RuneScape is profiting. Fortunately for you, the readers of this blog, there is a way to make Insight Venture Partners listen to your frustrations, however it has nothing to do with speaking out verbally or sending them angry hatemail. It involves talking with something that gamers as a whole are very reluctant to speak with: their wallets.

To understand why Insight Venture Partners has such a vested interest in the profits of RuneScape we first have to look at what Insight Venture Partners is as a corporation. For those of you unfamiliar with entrepreneurship I will try to keep this as short and sweet as possible. Insight Venture Partners is a venture capitalist company, meaning that they buy shares in smaller companies, pumping money into them with the hopes of it returning a huge profit on their investment. Now, since Insight Venture Partners owns 55% of JaGEx Ltd., they also have say in the operations of RuneScape. Therefore, we can assume that Insight Venture Partners wants to turn a profit in JaGEx Ltd. and has a significant investment in them. However, they seem to be mucking up in the area of player satisfaction, and this is where the idea of speaking to the game industry comes in.

In an industry with so many customer service problems words get nothing done, especially with money-hungry executives and venture capitalist companies out there. Gamers are very bad at using their wallets to speak to game companies because they feel that their words are enough, or maybe they think the game companies will listen to them if they continue to pay for their games. Money is support, right? For those of you who don’t know this psychological term, classical conditioning is using a positive reward to reinforce a behavior. In this example, gamers are classically conditioning the game industry to do whatever they want because the gamers keep paying the companies. How does this relate to RuneScape and the Squeal of Fortune you might ask? Read on to find out.

Simply put, when RuneScape profits Insight Venture Capitalists also profits. By paying JaGEx for membership and/or buying spins on the Squeal of Fortune, you are lining the pockets of Insight Venture Partners, encouraging them to expand the Squeal of Fortune and perhaps look into introducing similarly themed content packages for the future. Now, I am not encouraging everyone to stop paying for membership as a whole, that would entirely crush JaGEx and RuneScape as we know it would crumble. However, I am instead encouraging a boycott of PURCHASED SPINS. As tempting as it may be, especially with this summer's cosmetic rewards, don't. By speaking with your wallets instead of words, Insight Venture Partners will not receive as much money and only then will start realising that the players are not happy.

Happy ‘Scaping!