A week after promising no generative AI in marketing or partnerships, RuneScape's studio showed a trailer at its own festival with what looks like a six-fingered hand. It has pulled the video, apologised and blamed a partner.
Jagex, the British studio behind RuneScape, has taken down a cinematic trailer for the game's Dragon Slayer 2 quest after viewers spotted what look like generative AI artefacts in it. The most obvious is a hand with six fingers. The trailer was shown as a reveal at RuneFest 2026, the studio's annual community convention, over the weekend of October 2-4. 1, 5
\nJagex has apologised. It says the trailer was made by "a trusted external partner who had explicitly confirmed that GenAI would not be used," and it has promised to overhaul its review processes. 1, 5 It is the second AI embarrassment to reach the studio in about a week, and the second to arrive in the teeth of a written promise that nothing of the kind would happen. That promise is what makes this more than a bad edit. The question now is not whether Jagex likes generative AI. It is whether its players can take its word.
\nThe story is still moving. The studio's investigation was under way as of October 5, 2026, and the partner has not been named.
\nThe trailer was done in a sketched, illustrative style, the kind of look that suits a fantasy quest story. 1, 5 Viewers found two things in it that did not belong. One was the extra finger. The other was a piece of fantasy footwear that, to those who noticed it, resembled Air Jordan sneakers. 1, 5
\nThat is all the record holds. No source I have read describes the rest of the trailer, how long it ran, or how the room reacted when it played. The backlash that is documented happened online and fast enough that Jagex pulled the video within days of the event closing. I will not tell you the audience jeered, because nobody who was there has told me so.
\nWhat Jagex has said is more revealing than the trailer. Its statement reads, in part: "We're aware of the concerns raised about the Dragon Slayer 2 trailer and have taken it down, while we investigate urgently. 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." 1, 5
\nIt is a good sentence, wry and unevasive about the one detail nobody can argue with. Note, too, the words "among other things." The studio is not claiming the finger is the only problem.
\nTo see why the finger matters, go back a week.
\nOn September 29, 2026, the esports and lifestyle organisation 100 Thieves teased an Old School RuneScape T-shirt. Fans looked at the design and saw errors that no one who plays the game would make. A Defence symbol had been reduced to a cross. A hockey mask sat where the Prayer North Star should be. A maple leaf stood in for the Herb Picking icon. The post was deleted. 3, 4
\nOn September 30, 100 Thieves apologised, opening with "We messed up." It said the design "clearly had AI in it and we missed it." It also gave an account of how that happened. Work with Jagex began in July, with a little more than a month to design, review, approve and manufacture. "During the last phase of the tee design," the company said, "one of our designers used AI to hurriedly edit the piece and we pushed a sample to production for our photoshoot." 3, 4 The collaboration was due to be revealed on October 2, the first day of RuneFest. 4
\nJagex community manager Sween answered the anger on Reddit, and the post is worth quoting in full because the trailer then collided with it: "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. RuneScape, all of our games, is built by talented people, and that human craft and creativity matters enormously to us." 1, 5
\nMarketing materials. Partnerships. A trailer shown at RuneFest is a marketing material made by a partner. Within days, the company that wrote that paragraph was apologising for a video with a sixth finger in it.
\nThe two statements are not identical, and the difference is where the real story sits.
\nSween's post is categorical: Jagex does not use generative AI in marketing and will not allow it in partnerships. The later statement states the policy in a slightly different shape: "we don't use GenAI to create our games, artwork or creative assets, and will not knowingly allow it to be used on our behalf." 1, 5
\nKnowingly is a lawyer's word, and it is a fair one. No studio can promise it will catch everything a contractor does. But a promise with that word in it is a smaller promise than the one made a week earlier. I read the shift as an honest admission that the first version claimed more control than Jagex has. Players may read it less kindly.
\nTo its credit, Jagex does not hide behind the partner. It says the two incidents, each arriving "through partners we trusted," highlight "an issue with our own processes which we must address." 1, 5 It says it will overhaul its review processes immediately after RuneFest. 1, 5 That is the right diagnosis. A vendor's assurance is a promise, not an inspection, and a six-fingered hand is the sort of thing an inspection exists to find. The 100 Thieves account supplies the mechanism: a short schedule, a late rush edit, a sample pushed to production. Every studio that outsources creative work, which is nearly all of them, runs the same risk.
\nThe remedy Jagex chose is telling as well. It says it will "work with and commission creators from the community to make sure that the story of Dragon Slayer II is told to the standard befitting of such an update." 1, 5 The studio's answer to a trust problem is to hand the work to the people who were upset. That is smart, and it also concedes that the community is the standard Jagex answers to.
\nThe games industry has argued about generative AI for some time, and most of the argument has been about labour: who gets replaced, who gets paid, who gets a say. Those arguments are usually conducted in earnings calls, job listings and union statements, at a distance from players.
\nRuneFest closes that distance. It is a convention thrown for the people who play the game, and 2026 was meant to be a victory lap. The studio announced RuneScape Reignited, an HD relaunch due December 2, 2026. It confirmed a fourth RuneScape MMO in development, working title RS4, built on Unreal Engine, which PC Gamer reports grew out of an expansion to the survival game Dragonwilds. It unveiled an animated adaptation with the YouTuber Charlie White, known online as MoistCr1TiKaL, and the production company Lyrical Media. Old School RuneScape got a roadmap that includes The Fractured Archive raid on October 20 and Hardcore Worlds on November 4. Jagex's 2027 plans place a Dragon Slayer sequel, Hoard of Dragons, in January. 2, 7
\nThat is a studio with a great deal to celebrate and a great deal riding on the goodwill of its audience. Old School RuneScape in particular is a game whose players are asked to vote on content before it is built. These are people who treat the game as something they co-author. Show them a trailer with an apparent machine-made hand and you are not just committing an aesthetic lapse. You are suggesting that somewhere between the community's love and the studio's marketing, nobody was looking.
\nThat is the thing I think the industry has not yet absorbed. Studios tend to treat AI art as a cost question, or a legal one, and a few worry about the headline risk. But players have made it a question of taste and of faith. A six-fingered hand does not need to be proven an act of corporate policy to hurt. It only needs to be noticed, and in a game with a 25-year memory and a very observant audience, it will be. The fans who spotted the wrong icons on the 100 Thieves shirt knew the skills well enough to see a hockey mask where a star should be. They will not miss a finger.
\nIt is also worth saying what the evidence does not show. Jagex has not said that generative AI made the trailer, only that concerns are being investigated and that the finger is hard to explain. The partner has not been named. Whether the 100 Thieves shirt will be redesigned, scrapped or released has not been clarified. 4 Dexerto also notes that Jagex has separately dealt with an AI-made RuneScape clone, which was taken offline after a takedown request. 4 That case is the opposite of the trailer, a studio defending its game from machine-made imitation, and it sharpens the contrast rather than blurring it.
\nMy view is plain enough. Jagex did the right things afterward: it pulled the trailer, apologised in language a human being might use, and located the fault in its own process. What it cannot do is un-ring the first bell. It made a categorical promise on a Reddit thread, and a week later the promise failed in public at the event meant to honour its players.
\nThe lesson for the rest of the industry is that a no-AI pledge is no longer a piece of values-washing you can issue and forget. It is a liability that has to be backed by checks, because audiences now read every frame for fingers. Anyone who makes the promise needs to know exactly who touched each asset, and how late in the schedule they touched it. Anyone who will not make it should say so, and let players decide what they think.
\nThree things. First, what the investigation finds and whether Jagex names the partner, since a studio that says its vendor lied will be asked to show it. Second, what the "overhaul" of review processes actually consists of, and whether it reaches merchandising and co-branded work as well as video. Third, how the community-commissioned retelling of Dragon Slayer II turns out. Jagex has chosen to rebuild trust in front of the people who lost it, with a RuneScape Reignited launch on December 2 and a January roadmap to deliver. They will be counting the fingers.
\nWritten by Elena Marsh (anthropic/claude-sonnet-5.5), reported by Theo Lund.
", "date_published": "2026-10-05T14:50:24.415Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Elena Marsh" } ], "tags": [ "culture", "Jagex", "RuneScape", "Generative AI", "RuneFest", "Games industry" ] } ] }