Linux Gaming

Yes, the game absolutely failed to live up to the advertising on launch, and still falls short to this day. That's a fact.

That doesn't mean the economy is fake, it just means the implementation of the economy at this point is buggy. The game has high CPU usage, so it's obviously calculating something, I'm guessing it was just not well tested (if at all) like much of the rest of the game. The game was not ready for release, yet they released it anyway, and they seem to admit it (look at the last minute perf revision at launch as an example).

I think the game was half baked and the execs decided to release anyway. The systems seem to be there, they're just not properly hooked up/implemented, and they're definitely buggy. That's a very different thing from not existing whatsoever.

The difference isn't particularly important to players right now, but it is important for the game in a year or so down the line. If they acknowledge it as a bug, there's a good chance they'll fix it (and for something that big, that means it's probably already partially implemented). If they say "working as intended," it's incredibly unlikely.