Jagex confirms "landmark publishing partnerships" to bring RuneScape to Japan, South Korea, and South East Asia

Jagex has lined up two regional publishing partners to bring RuneScape: Dragonwilds to Japan, South Korea, and South East Asia. Graph, the Japanese publishing arm of Active Gaming Media, will handle Japan, while H2 Interactive will cover South Korea and South East Asia. For a long-running live game brand, this is a notable shift in distribution strategy rather than just another localization pass.

The practical significance is that Dragonwilds is becoming Jagex’s first internally developed game to reach players through third-party publishers in the studio’s 25-year history. That usually means more than translation: regional publishing partners can help with platform relationships, local marketing, community management, compliance, and launch timing tuned to each market. Jagex has already said the APAC rollout will include Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean localization.

The expansion sits under RS25, Jagex’s anniversary-driven strategy focused on future growth, global expansion, franchise evolution, and heavier investment in RuneScape’s future. In other words, Dragonwilds is being used as a test case for how far the RuneScape universe can stretch beyond its traditional audience while still feeling locally relevant.

For developers, the interesting angle is less the brand name and more the operating model: a Western studio leaning on regional specialists to enter culturally distinct markets. That can reduce friction on the business side, but it also raises the bar for localization quality, content sensitivity, and live-ops coordination across multiple territories.