Not sure if the title is clickbaity or not, but feel like this story belongs here as well.
DISCLAIMER: This is not an attack on the game developers, this is in solidarity to support them and hopefully get them the things they genuinely need.
Jagex, the game development studio behind popular MMORPGs “Runescape” and “Old School Runescape” (they're relatively separate communities with different development teams) has been getting a slew of negative feedback from its community over recent announcements to increase subscription prices. In USD monthly membership will increase from $11 to $12.49 per month. Now rational people would take the change as no issue because its just a small increase in price and inflation rates the past few years have been staggering. Some of the largest reasons for the outcries are because either Jagex upper management or their owning company the Carlye Group have forced the decision down to the game developers to break the news to the community and have them sort out the backlash.
Thats fairly bad already, but nothing retail workers and other store front employees aren't already used to but the price increase comes during a time when botting issues in the game are still running rampant, a black market economy for in game currency is still a glaring issue, account security is laughable comparative to other games of the same genre, and most importantly the development team to work on these issues is HORRIBLY understaffed and gets no support to do their jobs. Moderators are leaving left and right and replacements aren't coming in, furthering the downward spiral of these issues.
Jagex and Carlye Group had record breaking (or near record breaking) profits this past year and to raise prices is a major slap in the face when you know that the extra revenue will only be used to line upper management's pockets instead of reinvesting back into the dev team who are drowning in the messes the former has caused.
Think I droned on long enough, thank you.
TL;DR: Jagex the game company is raising subscription prices (either by order of their owning company Carlye Group or their own upper management) to line their own pockets and leaving the development team to struggle with understaffed and overworked moderators who have to face the community backlash