A little perspective on the survey

I will preface this with the following, I am not normally one to jump onto these sorts of things. Also, I’m not a financial expert so feel free to correct or slate me, but nicely please. That being said a quick calculation for you:

Jagex ended 2022 with an EBIDTA of £67m, a profit of £38m and spending ~£100m to run the business. Total revenue was £137m giving an EBIDTA margin of 49%, a margin of >20% is good at the very least.

Revenue from membership alone in 2022 was ~£100m. Player count has risen by 30% from 100k to 130k players (total). Crudely (and naively), £30m extra in membership, assuming most of these are members, inflation docks this to £16m real additional revenue (BoE calc) but the recent price rise pushes it up from this to £50m of additional revenue (ratio of UK premier membership increase) or a 50% increase. With the £100m cost of doing business converted to £111m based on inflation for this year (BoE calc), note accounting for inflation in both revenue earned and the cost to do so, this puts them at a profit of £39m from membership alone, add on the 2022 figures for MTX etc and profit is up at £74m!

A 94% increase in 2-years.

To float the idea of additional paid features is one thing and has to be considered based on dev time etc. Howvever, to even suggest adverts in a paid version of a game is appalling. We are paying effectively the price of one full deluxe edition AAA game each year to continue playing at Premier tier and even if this wouldn’t affect me on Premier, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

FYI - highest paid director earned £2m in 2022 also.

All this info is available publicly on gov.uk.