RuneFest is supposed to be a celebration. Jagex's annual community convention rolled out this weekend with a stack of announcements, including a full HD relaunch of RuneScape and the reveal of a brand-new MMO. Good stuff, all around. Then the Dragon Slayer 2 trailer dropped, and the mood shifted fast.
The trailer, a cinematic reveal for RuneScape 3's Dragon Slayer 2 quest, was produced in a sketched illustrative style. Players watching it quickly noticed something was off. A character's hand had six fingers. Fantasy footwear in the trailer bore a suspicious resemblance to Air Jordans. The kind of artifacts that only show up one way.
The timing could not have been worse
Here's the thing: this didn't happen in a vacuum. Just days before RuneFest, a third-party apparel collaboration involving Jagex drew criticism for using generative AI in its designs. At that point, a Jagex community manager known as Sween went to Reddit to get ahead of the situation, posting a firm statement: "We're as angry as you are about this. We wouldn't have approved the use of AI in any designs. We don't use generative AI to replace the artists and developers who make our games, we don't use it in our marketing materials, and we won't use it in our merchandising or allow its use in partnerships."
That was days ago. The Dragon Slayer 2 trailer dropped almost immediately after.
For the Old School RuneScape and RuneScape 3 communities, both of which care deeply about the human craft behind their games, this felt like a direct contradiction. The backlash was swift and loud.
What Jagex said after pulling the trailer
Jagex took the trailer down and released a follow-up statement addressing the situation directly. The key passage:
"This trailer was produced by a trusted external partner who had explicitly confirmed that GenAI would not be used. But, among other things, there's a sixth finger and, well, that's pretty hard to explain away. For that we apologise."
The statement went further, acknowledging the pattern: "This is the second time in quick succession that concerns about generative AI have arisen through partners we trusted, and for us that highlights an issue with our own processes which we must address."
The studio also confirmed it will overhaul its review processes immediately following RuneFest, and plans to commission community creators to produce content telling the Dragon Slayer 2 story properly.
Process failure, not just a rogue contractor
What makes this harder to brush off is that Jagex is essentially admitting the problem runs deeper than one bad actor. An external partner lied about gen AI use, yes. But the trailer made it through to a public stage presentation at RuneFest without anyone catching a six-fingered hand.
That's a quality assurance gap, not just a vendor problem. The studio's own statement frames it that way, which is at least honest. The promise to rebuild review processes and bring community creators into the pipeline is a concrete response, not just PR damage control.
The broader RuneScape community, including players of Old School RuneScape who have long championed the game's player-voted, human-crafted development philosophy, has been particularly vocal. For a franchise that polls its own playerbase before adding a new piece of content, having AI-generated art sneak into a major quest reveal cuts against everything the community values.
RuneFest still delivered genuinely exciting news this weekend. RuneScape Reignited launches December 2 with new HD visuals, and a fourth RuneScape MMO built on Unreal Engine is in development. Those announcements deserve attention. The Dragon Slayer 2 situation will need to be resolved cleanly before the studio can fully move past it, and players will be watching the new review process closely when that trailer eventually gets remade. For more on what's happening in Gielinor, the Old School RuneScape guides collection keeps you up to speed on everything worth knowing.
