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So this is a non-story. The royalty was based around a feature the company hasn't been able to deliver and was not contractually obligated to by any time. The kid doesn't seem particularly upset, and while it's not heartwarming, there doesn't seem to be any wrongdoing anywhere (other than etiquette-wise for the studio staying in touch more frequently... and perhaps they didn't want to spill dirty laundry about execution/financial issues to a contest winning teenager).

edit: Surprised by the negative reaction to this post. At least 5 downvotes altogether. I'm not endorsing Monyneux's actions in any way. I'm just saying that it's obvious what happened. They promised royalties on a product they failed to deliver for business and technical reasons. Now they are pivoting to a new game to try to stay in business.

They should have owned up to it, and given the kid an apology, a check for 1000 GBP, and modelled a character in "The Trail" as damage control.

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I think it's a story because of Molyneux. Peter Molyneux has failed to deliver completely for a long time.

With Godus, with Curiosity, it increasingly seems as though he failed to deliver even a finished game and in addition it seems as though he failed to even try.

For many gamers, it's the end of the final shred of Molyneux's respectability. People may snark about it, "Oh, what a surprise", but this was his last chance.

The royalty (or at least some prize) formed part of a concept that was at the heart of Curiosity - some grand, real, reward that justified all the cow-clicking nonsense. As such, it was an essential part of the game that people played. Meanwhile, Godus continues to languish without the promised features.

Comparing him with Shyamalan, this would be his Last Airbender. Not earth-shattering news that he messed it up completely, but final confirmation that his talent - if he ever had it - seems to have deserted him.

I think this is vastly overstating the importance of respect for a developer. What it comes down to is if he released a respectable game tomorrow, it would sell.

Despicable acts by game companies are nothing new, yet gamers continue to buy the games in droves. Ubisoft is a great example.

All that matters is if a game is good or not. If the game is terrible then good karma or a massive marketing budget can win you sales but overall having a fun game is the most important factor imho.

> if he released a respectable game tomorrow, it would sell.

If it's already made, sure. But if he needs funds to finish it and tries crowdfunding, this may bite him pretty hard.

That's harsh. Molyneux has done incredible work in the past. He played a part in Populous, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White. All of those games were ground breaking.

Peter Molyneux's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness: he's incredibly creative and ambitious. He aims very high, often a little beyond his reach. Frankly, that's what we should all be doing. I don't quite remember the quote, or the person who said it, but it went something like, "If you're not failing the majority of the time, you're not aiming high enough."

I'd rather play a game that was trying to be incredible but fell just short, rather than a game that aimed to be passable and hit the mark. Maybe that's what bugs me about Curiosity and Godus; these aren't the big, ambitious games I've grown accustomed to from Molyneux.

I don't disagree with you, but I was just googling the first three games you mentioned -- which I happen to agree are great games -- and I see that Syndicate, my absolute favorite, wasn't designed by Molyneux but by someone named Sean Cooper. Is it a coincidence that it's also not a God/sandbox game?

Black & White was ground breaking but it was such a disappointment to me that I wouldn't include it in any list of great games...

> I'd rather play a game that was trying to be incredible but fell just short, rather than a game that aimed to be passable and hit the mark.

I think that's an erroneous belief when it comes to games. Many games are complete failures because of the fact that they attempted to cram too much into the design.

Many of the best games take a core concept that's fun and refine it, polish it until it's gleaming. Only then do they add some small things off that core gameplay to flavor the experience. The shotgun approach of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks is a great way to either release a buggy, unfun mess (if you're lucky) or burn through your capital, goodwill, and development team before cancelling the project (if you're unlucky).

He aims very high, often a little beyond his reach.

The problem is that you used the word 'often' instead of 'consistently', which has been the case for the past 15 years. Black & White was the beginning of the end and the pattern for 21st Century Molyneux: promise the world, get bored, fail to deliver. At a shallow level, B&W looked great, but it was terrible as a game and an experience; both tedious and failing to deliver on promised complexity. That trend continues all the way to Godus.

It's not like he's hit-and-miss, and a few failures are okay as long as you have some hits mixed in. It's that the first half of his career was consistently hit, and the second half consistently miss.

After recently reading "Masters of Doom" (not sure how I went so long without reading it) this reminds me a lot of similar stories about the id guys and particularly Romero. So many creative, ambitious people get involved in the production of games and other digital art but so often they run into the limitations of time, budget, and project management. To get the money, you need to hype the hell out of a project (Daikatana?) but even if you get the investment, it's rarely enough to actually get the right people together and actually build something within the amount of time the market demands.

I'd imagine the same thing goes for films as well. Start with an incredibly ambitious concept only to find that you need to hype the hell out of it in order to get the necessary investment. But then with outside investment comes the requirement that the finished product be released within a certain timeframe and meet certain expectations in terms of profits generated. It's no wonder that for all of the talented and dedicated artists out there (in games or film), the majority of what gets released is either disappointing, unoriginal, or at best, pretty damn good...but rarely mindblowing or something that elevates the entire state of the art.

I think this story is more about how hype on the Internet works more than anything else. When I first saw the Curiosity announcement, and then spent 20 minutes (not much more) playing the game, I was really intrigued by just what was happening. For it to have fizzled and turned into your typical Molyneux-bashfest, replete with corporate liability clauses and non-delivery of products, well .. its more like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Of course, a lot of us have gotten to the point where the hype around Molyneux is itself enough entertainment. I was there in the Black&White days, which I considered to be a really interesting concept, but as is so often the case these days, the Creator of that Universe got bored, and moved on. Maybe thats the real lesson here ..

Tell that to all those people who funded Godus on kickstarter, based upon the promised feature list and goals. If you read some of the linked articles, Peter Molyneux basically admits to saying anything in order to get the backers' money. That's disreputable and unethical. But I doubt he cares at all, he's too busy over-hyping and over-promising on his next game.

I think it's more about them lying to their fans in an attempt to drum up publicity.

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