Popular 3D MMORPG Runescape has been pulled from all Chromebooks, unlikely to regain support

I’ve said many times here that I’m a big fan of Runescape, and have been playing since 2001. So, when I got news that Runescape Mobile was coming out, I was stoked to play wherever I wanted in smaller portions. Grinding through a few more passive skills without needing to be sitting at the desktop was its main draw, and while bossing isn’t ideal on a smaller screen, it was still possible.

With my Lenovo Chromebook Duet, I’ve spent hours and hours doing just that in the game, but now, upon launching it today, I was met with the grim realization that Jagex, Runescape 3’s developer and publisher, had pulled support for my device!

Worse still, upon trying to launch it on all of my other Chromebooks, I quickly found out that support had been pulled from them all! It doesn’t even show up in the Google Play Store anymore, and launching the game forces you to visit the store page to “update” it, which is now impossible. With that being said, Runescape Mobile can still be played on your phone, and Runescape classic is still widely available, but this is truly a bummer.

I’m not going to lie and say that the game ran well on any of my Chromebooks, with much lag, worse graphics and more than when I play on my Pixel 6 Pro, but it was still a nicety and a convenience. After doing some research, I stumbled upon a forum post on runescape.com where other gamers were pointing out the fact that Chromebook support had been yanked, so that pretty much confirms it. I also checked the web-based Play Store and all of my Chromebooks are greyed out on the “Install on other devices” screen.

Let me know in the comments if you play Runescape 3 Mobile, and if you’ve enjoyed it on your ChromeOS Devices in the past. I don’t foresee it returning any time soon, and I truly believe the reasoning behind this decision was the poor performance.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that you can still play the game – the desktop version of the game – with your mouse and keyboard only, on Nvidia GeForce NOW. This won’t cost you a penny, but you will be limited to one-hour gameplay sessions, lowered graphics and ridiculously long wait times to get a virtual machine.