"Luckily the joy that OSRS Gold I felt in the initial months of development remains with me over the course of development, and being working closely with Jagex direct on this project is an amazing opportunity," he says. "I did not think I would eventually receive support from the same studio which inspired me in first place..

Making the transition from hobbyist to fan project was obviously terrifying However, when you look at where I've ended up and the kind of support I've received for establishing Games by Malcs as an new studio, it's definitely worked out for the best."

Despite the close connection that existed between Melvor Idle and RuneScape, and the direct involvement of Jagex in the game, the publisher chose to keep the game as an original IP, rather than make it an officially-licensed RuneScape spin-off. Partly, this was acknowledgment that Malcolm had succeeded where Jagex had failed.

"We were actually looking at the idea of creating the idle RuneScape game a number of years ago, with RuneScape: Idle Adventures," Pfeiffer says. "In Alpha, we stopped development in order to concentrate our efforts on the main RuneScape games.

We've always believed in that RuneScape's game has potential in the area of idle games and Melvor Idle proves that RuneScape can inspire a brilliant idle game. But Melvor Idle stands up on its own merits too, and we wanted to stay true to the vision for Melvor Idle that Brendan did when he first started making it."

Pfeiffer also mentions the popularity of Melvor Idle to show that the talent that is available can be found in any game's community as Jagex has already discovered. "We've always noticed that this RuneScape crowd to be a great source of talent for Jagex and not just in terms of game designers but all of the many roles inside a games studio" Pfeiffer says. "RuneScape has seen more than 300 million accounts created in more than 20 years, so the amount of people with talent Buy RS Gold that have played the game is massive."