Picture this: you’re chatting with friends, ordering a pizza, and logging into RuneScape on your PC. For many millennials, that sentence alone conjures the era of dial-up internet, MSN Messenger, and Napster.
But before you reflexively type “a/s/l,” consider this: for a growing number of players, this ritual isn’t a distant memory—it’s happening right now.
In 2025, RuneScape—the online fantasy world where players embark on quests together, first launched in 2001—saw a remarkable resurgence. Paid membership grew by 30% to “well over a million,” according to the company, while millions more continued to play for free.
The game also reached a historic milestone: 240,000 players logged in simultaneously, the highest concurrent user count in its 25-year history. To put that in perspective, only three games on Steam had more players at the time of writing.
While that peak has since leveled off to around 175,000 concurrent users, it underscores a powerful trend: players, old and new, are returning in droves to the pixelated medieval realm of Gielinor.
