The talks progressed into Melvor Idle was soon signed to RuneScape Gold Jagex Partners, the RuneScape firm's publishing department. Jagex offered Malcolm assistance with development and assisted with a complete brand refresh and also assisted with community management and localisation, taking the game that was created by one person into something which is now available in 13 language (so far).

The launch was earlier in the month in the month of April. Even the Early Access version proved this formula was well-received by RPG players, having been downloaded over 600,000 times through Steam as well as the two main smartphone app stores. This is far more than his initial hopes when Malcolm first began his journey. Naturally, he was hoping that his strategy would succeed but there was no 'endgame for his game in mind.

"Luckily the joy that I felt in the initial months of development remains with me over the past few years of development. Being capable of working together with Jagex directly on this is an absolute dream come true," he says. "I would never have imagined that I'd get the help of the very studio that inspired me in the beginning.

The leap from hobby to fan-driven project was certainly a daunting task However, when you look at the places I've been and the help I've received when I established Games by Malcs as an emerging studio, it's certainly worked out for the best."

Despite the close relationship between Melvor Idle and RuneScape, and the involvement direct of Jagex however, the publisher decided to keep the game an original IP rather than making it an officially-licensed RuneScape spin-off. This was in part an acknowledgement of the fact that Malcolm had achieved in a place that Jagex was unable to do so.

"We were actually looking at developing some kind of idle RuneScape game a number of years ago in the form of RuneScape: Idle Adventures," Pfeiffer elaborates. "In Alpha, we stopped development to focus all our energy on core RuneScape games.

We've always believed in that RuneScape's possibilities are vast in the idle game, and Melvor Idle is a great proof that RuneScape is able to inspire an amazing idle game. However, Melvor Idle stands up on its own merits, so we felt we needed to remain true to the vision for Cheap RS Gold this game Brendan had when he started creating it."