Post-Leagues Fatigue, Bug Reports, and Response Times

Thanks to RS_Data, I was able to recover the player counts missing from the last six years of MisplacedItems data.

We can now do a proper postmortem analysis of this year’s Leagues performance versus last year’s.

During Leagues

Last year’s Leagues (Catalyst) ran for eight weeks, while this year’s Leagues ran for six weeks. I graphed the concurrent player counts across both time spans.

Catalyst (2025)Equilibrium (2026)

Player counts for Equilibrium’s first two weeks were stronger than last year’s Leagues (Catalyst). Player counts peaked at 51K (8/16), which was a new yearly high for 2026 that even exceeded last year’s peak (50K).

However, by week three, player counts had fallen much more quickly than during Catalyst. Equilibrium’s final week (17.5K) was 19.7% lower than the same week of Catalyst (21.8K).

Post-Leagues

Catalyst (2025)Equilibrium (2026)

After Catalyst, Equilibrium, and Demonic Pacts Leagues (OSRS), player counts dipped below the pre-Leagues average. Player counts then saw a brief rebound.

I’m calling this trend post-Leagues fatigue.

Conclusion

I think the data show players are taking a break when Leagues ends on either game, with player counts dipping before then rebounding.

We saw a lot of excitement for this year’s Leagues, but the excitement fizzled out quickly. By the final week, this year’s Leagues was doing worse than last year’s.

Although this is a review of one data point, I do question whether Jagex continuing to push Fresh Start Worlds and Leagues as annual events in the same formats continues to attract players.

It seems that the appetite for these limited events, especially on RS3, is brief and declining. And I’d expect players to be even less receptive next year unless there are major format changes.

I would take this as a bellwether for their Reignited push.

One caveat is that the lower player counts at the end of Leagues could be a result of players being demoralized by the number of bugs in this year’s Leagues, which I’m going to talk about next.

Bugs

Now to address some of the bugs I saw this past Leagues.

My primary source for this analysis is Reddit.

There are too many reports on Reddit alone (not to mention the RS Discord, X, or other sources) for me to say this is 100% accurate.

What I’m hoping to illustrate is when bugs were reported, how severe they were, and how long it took Jagex to fix them on average, if at all.

Many of the bugs were very annoying, and one could even argue game-breaking.

Bugs were fixed in roughly six days on average. Some of the worst bugs, however, were fixed within a day.

A number of bugs were re-reported after Jagex claimed they were fixed. I cannot say who was right or wrong.

I think the number of bugs, their severity, the response time, and bad game design decisions may have pushed people away from Leagues. I know I reached a point where I stopped playing because I was frustrated with the game design.

I would tell Jagex that research supports that people care more about basic level services working as expected than attempts to exceed their expectations while those services fail.

Many of these bugs failed the game-as-promised benchmark, and that simply should not be happening.