It was obvious in hindsight. It was also obvious before and while it was happening.
The article is worth a read, it’s a common enough story that not exactly groundbreaking reporting but I liked how they tied the scam into Molyneux’s next project.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
25 points (100.0% liked)
Gaming
34749 readers
32 users here now
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
What’s funny is, the phrase “Molyneux’s failed legacy” is accurate without this specific game being named “Legacy.”
I really thought this was going to be a mention to Godus. I didnt know he was into NFTs
@GammaGames Imagine putting money into a Molyneux project and expecting to get a functional game out of it, let alone rewards.
Hahaha yeah. Pay to earn? More like pay to learn
(i stole this joke)
This week, players are being asked to pay $25 for early access to Masters of Albion, a god game throwback that legendary designer Peter Molyneux (Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White) says will be the last game he ever works on.
Also, Curiosity and Godus. Let's not forgot about those "legendary" games.
It's telling that the games mentioned with his name are decades old, and he never stopped making new games.
Lemme quote a Minecraft forums post:
Now, I'm going to take an educated guess here and say that Peter Molyneux is probably the developer in question that suggested these things [that Notch should add pets to Minecraft]. It's right up his ally [SIC - alley].
A couple of things to keep in mind with Molyneux: he has great ideas, but his ideas are often way overly ambitious. This is why his games are constantly very late and way over budget. While he's brilliant, he also has a tendency to go way off on design tangents that keep his development teams spinning in circles.
This is from 2011. Fifteen years ago, at least professional game designers (like the OP from that quote, FlowerChild) were already aware Molyneux is an "ideas guy". He pictures huuuuuge, world-changing games that are unfeasible. Couple this with anything related to RL money and guess what, you'll get people losing money.
Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time! RIP, apparently 😔
RIP, apparently 😔
…wow. I wasn't aware of that at all. But the forums confirm it, and Battosay wouldn't joke about it. :-/
May he rest in peace.
Anyway. Now thinking, most of his takes were spot on, and proved true later on: Minecraft wasting huge amounts of dev time on pathfinding for pets and then testificates, Forge becoming a drama-generating machine, and, more on-topic, Molyneux.
How's that decentralised gaming ecosystem working out?
"Play to earn" and NFTs have never been about making games, it's always been about "how to pretend our speculation-based scam is something that everyone wants".
They know they can only get so many faithful into the crypto bullshit. And if they don't get more people in, or at least pretend a lot more will be interested very soon (get yours early!) the illusion breaks.
Soooo... Hey fellow gamer? Do you know what you need? Game money that's totally (not completely unlike) real money! And you can even earn more just by playing! (our shitty, hastily made pseudo-game).
He started with excellent ideas that created some amazing games Fable, Black and White, Dungeon Keeper and then went completely of the fucking rails with ideas that lead nowhere, but some devs from those days seem to have issues with visualising new ideas after exhausting their first one, remember Romero and how he was going to make you his bitch? and then made Daikatana that was his biggest failure and same is with Molyneux they started swinging and then crashed and burned.
not only devs. I think this happened to George Lucas as well
I think lucas checked out when he figured out the merch angle. Anything he did after that was made in leisure.
I think he would’ve been fine if he’d had constraints. When he has a huge budget the games still try to do too much.
The Romero thing is interesting… apparently he can still make a decent WAD, but not every game the guy works on is going to be a banger. Sometimes the marketing team leans in a little too hard. Not to say he didn’t believe in the game, I’ve never played that one
I've played a demo of it ages ago and can only say do yourself a favour and don't.
LOL thank you for your sacrifice