Mat K Leaves Jagex

[Mojo]

Quote

The Old School team are sad to announce the departure of Mod Mat K. Mat, you've been with Old School RuneScape from day one, and we cannot thank you enough for your hard work. We're going to miss you, we're going to miss the data streams, and even the dad jokes. Here's a few words from Mat, to you - the community.


"Nearly 14 years ago I arrived at Jagex as a fresh faced new recruit full of optimism and excitement. Today, I am sorry to say that I have left Jagex to become a fresh faced new recruit elsewhere.

Over the last 14 years I have seen huge changes to RuneScape, from recruitment of thousands of PMods, release of new skills, EOC and the launch of Old School RuneScape. I have overseen the remarkable phenomenon which has become Old School RuneScape, listening to and understanding you has been the key to its success and this little game has shown the entire industry just how important the community is. Old School RuneScape has been a labour of love for me and I hope that I have led it in a way which leaves it in the state of the most player focused game on the planet.

I have made many lifelong friends while working at Jagex, that's other staff, players and partners that I have worked with and I do not want to lose touch with anyone. I'll still be posting on Twitter so you can follow what I am getting up to on there and I'm sure I'll be at RuneFest.

Before I joined Jagex I was a player, RuneScape has been an important part of my life for 15 years now and with all the new and exciting content on the way I am not about to stop that. I shall continue to play OSRS, and who knows you may even see me stream some of it on Twitch.

From me it is not a farewell, it's I am one of you now."
-Mat K

 

He’s been there since the start in 2013 and was key in pushing for OSRS to be given new updates and not just maintained as was the original plan. Sad to see him go, I wonder where he is going. 

[Lait Choco]

Shit that sucks. Really liked him as he always knew what was best for the game. I will be missing him and his wonderfull data streams. Shame a lot of people give him a hard time, not knowing he was indeed one of the key elements OSRS is the thing we know and love today. Good side about this, now you can rag him without fear of banned

 

[Ghost Sabre]

Glad that he took care of the game for this long. Hopefully he mentored Ash to be a big boss so the young mods don't step out of line.

[MrFreakyFrog]

Let's hope that they continue to listen to the community and god ash takes control. Good luck to the guy!

[H58]

I would be good to see Archie step up too, we would potentially have more pvp updates with him on the "lead".

[Ghost Sabre]

27 minutes ago, H58 said:

I would be good to see Archie step up too, we would potentially have more pvp updates with him on the "lead".

He doesn't have any development experience though? I think he's just the community coordinator right?

[Combustions]

He's done a ton for OSRS - he will be missed for sure. Ash will be a welcome leader 

[H58]

11 minutes ago, Ghost Sabre said:

He doesn't have any development experience though? I think he's just the community coordinator right?

Not sure what he even does, but I know that he's the only one (?) that knows pvp scene a bit more so it would be decent to see him get a promotion but yeah Ash is probably better fit to replace mat k.

[Ghost Sabre]

1 hour ago, H58 said:

Not sure what he even does, but I know that he's the only one (?) that knows pvp scene a bit more so it would be decent to see him get a promotion but yeah Ash is probably better fit to replace mat k.

No1s perfect was always a shit pker lmfaooo VLS prod 

Edited May 16, 2019 by Ghost Sabre

[Vorki]

With MMK gone, we have to pray the chinese investors don't delete the game with MTX.

[WG Gore Def]

13 hours ago, Voooooooorki said:

With MMK gone, we have to pray the chinese investors don't delete the game with MTX.

I hope so as well. He was a big speaker against MTX for us.

 

Regardless, we've quit before, we'll quit again if necessary and I think they know this.

[Glaucon24]

I haven't been playing OSRS for as long as some of you, but I never really liked Mod Mat K. When I watched the Q and A streams, if he was there, he never seemed all that happy to be there. There was also some drama about Mod Mat K showing favoritism to Emilyispro.

 

But the real thing that bugged me about him was his behavior during the RuneLite controversy. If I recall correctly, Mod Mat K was basically bullying/threatening the maker of RuneLite to take down the client.

 

I understand that they felt the the open-source nature of the client was bad, but given that Jagex has be horrendous at addressing other 3rd-party clients (such as OSBuddy), and given that the creator seemed to just want to do a good thing and provide good features for free, this was the wrong way to treat RuneLite's creator. I will be happy if the improve the official client and ban all third-party clients, but while OSBuddy is allowed to exist, I am happy that RuneLite is there for us also.

Edited May 18, 2019 by WG Glaucon

[Mojo]

On 5/18/2019 at 2:49 AM, WG Glaucon said:

I haven't been playing OSRS for as long as some of you, but I never really liked Mod Mat K. When I watched the Q and A streams, if he was there, he never seemed all that happy to be there. There was also some drama about Mod Mat K showing favoritism to Emilyispro.

 

But the real thing that bugged me about him was his behavior during the RuneLite controversy. If I recall correctly, Mod Mat K was basically bullying/threatening the maker of RuneLite to take down the client.

 

I understand that they felt the the open-source nature of the client was bad, but given that Jagex has be horrendous at addressing other 3rd-party clients (such as OSBuddy), and given that the creator seemed to just want to do a good thing and provide good features for free, this was the wrong way to treat RuneLite's creator. I will be happy if the improve the official client and ban all third-party clients, but while OSBuddy is allowed to exist, I am happy that RuneLite is there for us also.

I think your opinion is pretty harsh tbh. Regarding emilyispro, Jagex (not Mat himself) issued the relevant ban for the offence then after that Mat simply defended her against a torrent of abuse from the sometimes toxic OSRS community.

Regarding RuneLite, he made the correct decision in the end but I think he was initially guided by higher forces in Jagex plus their legal team who were trying to persuade him to get rid of RuneLite.

Even if you consider these two issues as big errors I think the other stuff Mat has done for OSRS far outweighs this. It's very likely that OSRS would have died without Mat K and we wouldn't be sitting here discussing it. 

[WG Gore Def]

 

On 5/18/2019 at 3:49 AM, WG Glaucon said:

I haven't been playing OSRS for as long as some of you, but I never really liked Mod Mat K. When I watched the Q and A streams, if he was there, he never seemed all that happy to be there. There was also some drama about Mod Mat K showing favoritism to Emilyispro.

 

But the real thing that bugged me about him was his behavior during the RuneLite controversy. If I recall correctly, Mod Mat K was basically bullying/threatening the maker of RuneLite to take down the client.

 

I understand that they felt the the open-source nature of the client was bad, but given that Jagex has be horrendous at addressing other 3rd-party clients (such as OSBuddy), and given that the creator seemed to just want to do a good thing and provide good features for free, this was the wrong way to treat RuneLite's creator. I will be happy if the improve the official client and ban all third-party clients, but while OSBuddy is allowed to exist, I am happy that RuneLite is there for us also.

 

Honestly there's a big difference between RL and OSB. This is due to the nature of open source and anyone allowing to edit it as they please unlike with OSB. This makes it hard to curate which plugins are being used and/or are allowed. Even back then there were a lot of controversial non-official RL plugins floating around and they were very detrimental to the game integrity and very hard/impossible to detect. This scene has only grown, and now we have even crazier plugins going around that can do very questionable things such as one-way-safespot highlighting/overlays, PVM plugins for new content (hydra, vork, zulrah, cox, tob and even some inferno ones).

 

I was in the same boat and didn't understand at first why RL was being targeted over OSB when they seemingly did the same thing. But I'm more inclined to side with Jagex nowadays after learning all of this. I feel if they improved the official client or bought over OSB and then banned all 3rd party clients, this would be a non-issue and the right way to do it. It's not a simple issue and it doesn't have an easy or cheap fix, so it's hard to judge them based on this. I feel like they should have communicated better with the community back then, and now it feels hard to go against the wishes of the community.

 

I only have respect for Mat and I believe he has always wanted what was best for the game.

Edited May 19, 2019 by WG Gore Def

[Gamerdad]

He will be missed