If your game has been in Alpha since 2015. And there are basically no updates since that time, then yeah you're a scam artist. He knew what he was doing was wrong and he kept doing it for nearly a decade, there's no defense for that.

Also plenty of other software developers manage not to do what he does so it's obviously not actually that hard

[–] alienangel@sffa.community 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah at least going by what's reported in this article, Peter seems pretty neck deep in the scamming. If it's not intentional the most charitable interpretation i can think of is he's gone senile and someone else is using his name to run the scams:

Molyneux has copped to failures with Godus several times, saying he's learned his lesson about overpromising - usually while making grand proclamations about what his next game will be. Godus Wars was followed by 22cans' only other game still available on Steam, The Trail, which Molyneux said would "build on feelings and emotions untapped so far."

Last month, 22cans released their latest game, the business management and invention sim Legacy, which seems to be Molyneux operating in his Theme Park/The Movies mode - except that Legacy is a Web3 blockchain game and they sold £40 million in NFT land two years before launch. 22cans updated Legacy players earlier this month to explain that they'd be ramping up marketing efforts on Legacy soon so as to help attract tenants for its current population of wannabe digital landlords.

Molyneux, meanwhile, began talking about 22cans' next game back in October with launch of a development blog for a fantasy RPG set in Albion, which is also the name of the fantasy Britain where Lionhead's Fable was set.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 2 points 1 year ago

Kind of makes you wonder who was doing all the work for him before.

[–] didnt_readit@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk…telling lies to potential customers that you know to be bullshit to get money from them based on promises you know you’ll never deliver sure sounds like a scam artist to me:

(From the article)

Molyneux talked in interviews about the pressure to overpromise in order to secure funding, telling Tech Radar that "the behaviour is incredibly destructive, which is 'Christ, we've only got 10 days to go and we've got to make £100,000, for fuck's sake, lets just say anything'."

[–] Khrux@ttrpg.network 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I always thought he wanted to be the Steve Jobs of the gaming world and never found his signature product to sell his success.

[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Perfect analogy