The story
Founded by Andrew Gower and Paul Gower in 2001.1
Jagex was founded in 1999 by brothers Andrew and Paul Gower. That same year they began work on the MMORPG RuneScape, which was released in January 2001. In December 2001, Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, and Constant Tedder launched Jagex in its current incarnation, with Tedder as its CEO. Jagex formally acquired the Jagex name from Andrew Gower in 2001.
RuneScape grew dramatically; one year after its release over a million free accounts had been registered. The game was originally supported by advertisements, however, the dot-com bubble meant that there were fewer advertisers. The new company created a paid version of the game with extra features, to support hosting costs and continued development. The pay-to-play version of RuneScape was released on 27 February 2002. It gained 2,000 subscribers in the first hour and 5,000 subscribers in the first week, making it one of the largest Java pay-to-play games in the world at the time. In 2007, RuneScape achieved one million subscribers; 11 years after launch, the company touted 200 million accounts.
Until the release of War of Legends in 2010, the company used the slogan "Java Gaming Experts" as it had only produced games written in Java up to that point. Following the launch of the Flash-based War of Legends, the company name was said to stand for "Just About the Game Experience".
Company structure
As RuneScape gained users, Jagex grew. By 11 December 2003, RuneScape had 65,000 paying members, and Jagex had 29 employees. On 4 May 2007, RuneScape had over 6,000,000 active free accounts and over 1,000,000 active pay-to-play subscribers. By July 2012, Jagex had over 500 employees.
Initially, the company was self-funded; however, in October 2005, Jagex received an investment from Insight Venture Partners. On 23 October 2007, Geoff Iddison, former European CEO of PayPal, replaced Constant Tedder as CEO. Iddison resigned as CEO in January 2009, replaced by Mark Gerhard, who had been Jagex CTO before his appointment. Jagex became a member of the United Kingdom's game developer trade body, TIGA, on 15 April 2009. Richard Wilson, TIGA's CEO, described Jagex as "one of the most successful game developers in the world, not just the UK. Jagex has developed extraordinarily popular games and is at the leading edge in terms of online safety and security."
In December 2010 The Raine Group and Spectrum Equity Investors invested in the company, while Insight increased their investment. Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, and Constant Tedder left the board of directors at that time. In January 2012, Insight increased its stake in Jagex from 35% to 55%, giving it a controlling interest in the company. However, in an interview, Gerhard stated that Insight took their 55% stake 13 months prior in December 2010. On 11 September 2014, Mark Gerhard announced his resignation from Jagex by 2015. On 2 April 2015, Rod Cousens was appointed CEO of Jagex following his departure from Codemasters. In July 2016 Jagex was purchased by Hongtou, a Chinese investment company, which was subsequently acquired by Zhongji Holdings, which later changed its name to Fukong Interactive Entertainment. Jagex remained under Hongtou within Fukong's structure until it was sold to Macarthur Fortune Holding, a US-based asset management company, in April 2020 for $530 million.
Phil Mansell became Jagex' CEO in January 2017.
The Carlyle Group acquired a majority stake in the firm in January 2021 from Macarthur in a deal for an undisclosed amount. After announcement of this, Plutos Sama Holdings filed a legal complaint asserting that the sale of Jagex from Shanghai Hongtou to Macarthur was invalid due to past issues over business dealings with Shanghai Hongtou. Plutos Sama stated in their complaint they had put in a sole bid to acquire Hongtou, including Jagex, around August 2020, but this deal never was complete, but as it should have gone through, they are the rightful owners of Jagex.
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In February 2024, CVC Capital Partners Fund VIII and Haveli Investments purchased Jagex from the Carlyle Group for £910 million.
In March 2025, Jon Bellamy succeeded Mansell as CEO of Jagex.
From Wikipedia’s article on Jagex, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3