The company that developed Runescape, Cambridge-based Jagex has recently launched its own Java-based casual games portal FunOrb. FunOrb now has its millionth player, less than one year since it launched. With such a huge amount of interest, Develop sits down with OSRS gold company CEO Mark Gerhard to talk about the plans of the company for growth and the future of the free-to-play model itself.

Jagex is recognized as the pioneer of free to-play games, but has the model itself achieved the level of popularity many had expected it to? It has. At the beginning, the whole industry was fixated on classic retail distribution, and no one really understood the free-to-play model or the model of online.

Today we see that the opposite is true. Gaming giants want to buy RuneScape gold duplicate our success. A lot of companies do not adhere to our principles. When we look at the companies that have tried to replicate our approach such as Sony and Free Realms, these companies are releasing just a free demo for the membership and monetization part of the game.