Discussions continued, and Melvor Idle was soon signed to Jagex Partners, the RuneScape company's publishing arm OSRS Gold. Jagex provided Malcolm help with his development, and also helped to complete a brand overhaul and helped with community management as well as localisation, which translates an idea created by one person to be accessible in 13 local languages (so that far).
It launched earlier this month and even the Early Access version proved this formula is popular with RPG players. It was downloaded over 600,000 times through Steam as well as the two main apps for mobile devices. It was way above and beyond his initial hopes when Malcolm first began his journey. Naturally, he had hopes that his game would be successful but it wasn't a 'endgame that he was thinking of.
"Luckily the joy that I felt in those first few months is still with me during the past few years of development, and being in a position to collaborate with Jagex in direct collaboration on this is something I've always wanted to do," he says. "I had no idea that I'd get the support of the very studio that inspired me in first place.
Making the transition from hobby into fan project was obviously terrifying But looking at where I've ended up and the support I've received in establishing Games by Malcs as an rising studio, it's certainly worked out for the most successful."
Despite the close ties to Melvor Idle and RuneScape, and the direct involvement of Jagex in the game Cheap RuneScape Gold, the publisher decided to keep the game as an original IP, rather than making it an official RuneScape spin-off. This was in part recognition that Malcolm had achieved where Jagex itself had failed.