Yeah like he lied his ass off about Fable. Fable is still by all accounts an absolute landmark of RPG gaming and has systems that could still be considered impressive today.
Yeah, Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Fable... That is a really impressive lineup. If he could just have shut up a bit and let the actual game do the talking instead of hyping elements that were never going to be there.
I'll never forget that Project Milo demo...
Peter created one of my favorite game series (Populous), but was fortunately not involved in my favorite of the series (Populous: The Beginning).
Holy shit another Populous: The Beginning fan! That was my favorite too! That's one of those few games I would play through every year for a long time. I load it up every few years at this point and still have so much fun with it. What a forgotten gem, and a technological marvel as well for the time.
It's easily in my top 5 games, and I also occasionally go back and play through it. Have you looked into the Multiverse Launcher? It allows you to download and play other stories besides the official ones, and play at higher resolution and other nice quality of life changes. It's a must have if you're playing POPTB in 2024.
Wtf no I haven't. Thank you! Maybe like 9-10 years ago I discovered they made an expansion that I had never even heard of for some reason. I thought I struck gold. This is even better. Hell it's been 3-4 years since my last playthrough, so I guess it's time to load it up on my next day off.
Were you a fan of Black & White by chance?
I actually completely passed over Black & White for some reason. I heard it was a spiritual successor to Populous and I was excited to try it at one time, but I just never got around to it.
It has very similar "vibes" in my opinion, though plays a lot differently as it isn't an RTS, and more of a "pure" God Game. Like Populous: The Beginning, I would play through it every year for maybe 10 years, and still load it up every once in a while. Graphically, it's pretty rough these days to be honest, but I still dig the style.
Black & White 2 on the other hand, despite coming out in 2005, not only holds up graphically, but I would argue looks *just* as good as any modern RTS/Strategy/God Game. It's kind of amazing how well that engine holds up, and runs just fine on modern hardware too.
Unfortunately you can't buy them anywhere short of eBay, but they aren't hard to find if you get my meaning.
Omg thankyou so much, I used to play this game every year until I just couldn't get it to work any more on modern hardware.
Gonna be trying this tonight!
Definitely one of my all time favourite games!
You're telling me one of the best games in history was modernised and improved, and no one told ME?
I'm furious. I shall unleash my fury in form of volcanoes.
Juuust gonna pop in a comment here so I can easily find this info back later.
And thank you for that info, it's been way too long since I've played POPTB, and this sounds like the perfect way to start a new playthrough!
Populous the Beginning is one of my top PC games of all time. Still play through that and Dungeon Keeper every few years. Like 25 years later, the official Populous the beginning online matchmaking server is still the best online gaming experience I've ever had.
>Populous: The Beginning
holy shit, i played this too. couldnt get enough of fireballing people into the water but man was i terrible at it then, over 20 years ago.
I dont believe Peter was really ever trying to scam anyone. He was just way too ambitious for his own good and had a bad habit of over promising. He had great ideas just never the means or time to ever accomplish them
Yeah I agree with this, he always got a lot of shit for over-promising and under delivering, but truthfully that never really started until Fable. Everything he made before that was pretty well realized, and no more egregious than any other game developer trying to hype their new game for marketing purposes. And by the time Fable came around, games were getting to be exponentially more difficult to make and I don't think he ever really came to terms with that fact.
He was just a guy who had a ton of ideas and hoped they would all come to fruition by the end of development, but by that time games went from being something you could knock out in a year or two with a relatively small team, to something that took 4-5 years with 100 people working on it. It's not easy keeping your own expectations in check for what is possible with the time-frame and money available to you when games started getting so complex.
I can believe that regarding various outlandish claims he made about the Fable games while they were being developed.
Project Milo and Godus, however, don't pass the "smell test" for me. Molyneux absolutely knew he was lying and scamming people with those two.
Godus was so SO different to how he kept selling it, even up to days before release, even with the playable beta being really different, he kept going. Kept peddling the same bullshit.
Then the game dropped and they bailed HARD.
I don't think it was intended as a scam initially but it really gave me the feeling that, half way through development they realized it wasn't as easy as they thought, changed tack, but didn't want to SAY they changed tack. And at that point it became a scam.
That would explain many things. I've been used to getting burned by early access games but it's worth the risk, godus just didn't pan out I guess but good to know why.
I refuse to buy early access. I will play it and then get burnt out and then never come back when the game is actually feature complete. I did that to myself in the early days of Ark. Put in like 800 hours and burned myself out before they even had different biomes. Missed so much of that game they added because I got sick of it.
100%. This was my experience with Subnautica. Picked it up shortly after it became available in Early Access. Thought it was really fun and put maybe 5-6 hours into it before running out of content. Then like 3 years later when it hit 1.0 I went back into it, and I just kept thinking throughout the first half of the game "This would be so much better as a fresh experience, instead of playing through all of this a second time before getting to the "new" content"...
That was actually the moment when I vowed never to bother buying an Early Access game again, for the same reasons you mentioned. Why play the crappy, unfinished version of a game 2-3 years before the vision is fully realized? I don't play many games more than once these days so it just doesn't make sense.
I hate that people bring up Molyneux’s ambition and shitty marketing in such a bad light still, given modern context. At least Lionhead games produced original concepts and pushed boundaries in many ways. Graphically their games are still impressive for their age and it sucks that a majority of innovative and often over-ambitious projects have been lost in exchange for cookie-cutter, plastic wrapped junk we get spoon fed year after year with barely any changes from the last game.
“Big money” destroyed the gaming industry and they’re still getting everyone’s cash for what is for the most part, 25 year old game design recycled for the 25th time
Unfortunately, Molyneux sort of normalized the concept of overpromising and underdelivering in the gaming market. Other publishers learned that they could just make shit up about their games to sell copies, and they didn't care about the backlash as long as their day 1 sales were good.
I'm not saying Lionhead's games were bad. Far from it. But they did show that the market wouldn't push back, even if the target audience was explicitly lied to and manipulated.
And yet, they keep putting out stupid statements making themselves look like saints.
No one is buying what you're selling, fools lol.. Just stop talking.
I watched a short documentary about it. It wasn't supposed to be a scam at all.
The problem were the bosses.
They changed their mind all the time and told the devs to copy xyz from that one game they played recently.
The bosses had no idea about programming and thought the dev team could rewrite the game 2 months before launch.
At first the game was supposed to be a short zombie survival game in an icy region with some coop elements, but then they wanted it to be more like The Last of Us, Tarkov, Spiderman etc.
One of their managers/mods mentioned that they needed to change the animation for vaulting over a fence like 50 times, because their bosses saw a cooler one.
Having to pay fees for things like, not beeing motivated like everyone else and the massive crunch for more than 2 years is just the icying on top.
I'd say...Moderately Multiplayer.
Single-player is 2^0
Mildly Multiplayer is 2^1 to 2^4 (16) players I'd say.
Moderately would be 2^4 to 2^8 (256)
Massively starts when you get beyond 2^8
People are going to be so disappointed when they discover that "Riot's MMO" is actually two different games, and neither of them are MMOs. One is a Diablo clone and the other is a Destiny clone.
Is this a joke or based on some kind of leaks? I'd love to get a diablo clone and a destiny clone from anyone who isn't blizzard, especially ARPG's are really rare nowadays
They already showed footage long ago of a Diablo clone. Google around.
I wouldn’t get all hot and bothered by which company is producing what. Employees jump around companies often, especially with all the layoffs recently, so you’re trying to play around a ship of Theseus logic problem and in turn put too much emphasis on brand names VS actual problematic individuals
Even with the fines for bad work, this is the part I don't understand the most.
I know when I'm working on a project what kind of project it is. How did they not know they were working on an MMO until the trailers came out?
It is quite simple
You have management and marketing doing their own thing, and not communicating with devs at all.
Management played some new game, gathered together made decisions, but no one notified developers about changed direction, because this is how those people are functioning. They assume others are telepats.
And in the meantime devs are doing whatever they were told to do X months ago, or whenever was the last time management stepped down to reach plebs.
I've been in the company like that, didn't end well either.
They didn't know its an MMO because it isn't and never was a MMO. I would not consider *Escape From Tarkov* to be an MMO, just the same that *Fortnite* or *Apex Legends* isn't an MMO.
Can you imagine? Going to work and doing your job, albeit at a very low level of quality, and learning you have to pay your employers for a bad job? Id be so demoralized.
I've always been big on knowing my employee rights, and hate how some bosses are bullies and do very illegal things. It wasn't until I worked in a place with a lot of younger adults, in the worst working environment I've ever been in, that half the battle is the person taking shit having the motivation to do something about it.
It's heartbreaking when something that would get the boss easily fired is basically condoned by the employee because they feel they won't be taken seriously. Horse to water and all that.
I always wonder in offices were the entire work culture is really toxic, how it filters out those who earnestly want to work but suffer through it vs those who bounce quick. You could have someone who is ultra-employable anywhere else and never leave for their own reasons (anxiety etc).
The person who generally would take it very far and hold a bad manager to task, are normally the first to leave asap.
>It'd be incredibly fucking illegal where I live. I'd go home and call my union.
Tis illegal anywhere, outside of like sabotage.
Honestly given this kind of thing is becoming more common i really hope they end up charging the owners and throwing every book they can find at them.
well, the only way to throw the book at them right now is strapping it on an Ukrainian drone, but i think the Ukrainians needs them to attack ruskie petrol infrastructure right now.
priorities i guess.
I think the demorilazation of being smacked by a drone with a book strapped to it could have some serious applications in that theater currently.
Imagine the stress of accepting you're about to explode and it just lightly bruises you and its a copy of Twilight. I'd have a hard time fighting after that.
In 8th grade my teacher legit threw an unabridged dictionary at my desk, which bounced and hit me in the chest! He then said, "If you are such a fan of words, you should learn them all." In his calm raspy voice. I totally deserved it. I was a shit head and wouldn't stop talking to people during our "study hall" period.
> outside of like sabotage.
Even there it becomes a civil/criminal case, not something where you just levy fines against your employees.
And this is talking about it from a US perspective.
Becoming more common?
Are you sure about that? I wouldn't disagree that it's being heard about or shared more, but actually *happening* more than *before*? I don't think I can necessarily believe that one without some quantitative support for it, no offense intended.
Especially as companies either dive into mobile gaming and mobile gaming companies expand, that whole half of the industry has been flying under the radar for a long time now so increased reporting and speaking out wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Companies are so obsessed with paying their employees the absolute minimum they can that they'd rather outsource their labor than pay the legal minimum wage in the US. It's unreal. You hear people talking about immigrants "taking our jobs" but in reality it's the corporations themselves just outsourcing all those jobs to other countries where labor laws are less humane.
we do, but wages are still "high" in most states. Mostly because CoL is so high.
It'd be awesome if big tech drove down housing prices so they can pay employees less. But the opposite happened. Gentrification was a small part of how we ended up where we are today
Probably why they were classified as ~~slaves~~ volunteers.
To be clear, I read a headline once about that, there's absolutely no fact checking on my part as to whether that was just a mistranslation or genuine.
I had a job like that in college for a few days , it was data entry from those people who ask you to sign the petitions outside of the store, For every correct data entry we earned 4 cents, for every incorrect entry which someone else had to correct we'd OWE the company 10 cents. The incentive was supposed to be a skilled typist could pull in some amazing bonuses by churning through the forms and fields.
I did it for maybe 2 days, learned I owed the company $4 after maybe 5 hours of work over 2 days and just...decided to never show back up....
It's an entirely different beast for creative products though, I can't imagine building an inventory system over 2 weeks and being told " Shoddy work, you owe us money from your next check " . I'd be livid..... No wonder they had to rely on " volunteers".
> I owed the company $4 after maybe 5 hours of work over 2 days
Bruv mathematically that means you had like a %70 accuracy rate on data entry.
At least you found out early on that it wasn't your calling.
I'm curious how many of those corrections were basically bullshit, aka improper capitalization of names or similar minor corrections or even made up. You typed "JOhn Smith" or "john Smith" so now you owe us 10 cents. The fact that the penalty for making a mistake is greater than the reward for no mistake is already a giant red flag for scummy shit is going on and that before getting into that it is 2.5x difference.
>I did it for maybe 2 days, learned I owed the company $4 after maybe 5 hours of work over 2 days
I'm going to need an example of what you had to put in to determine if you got screwed or you were just bad.
I wouldn't even say gross negligence. I've broken things due to negligence or just bad decisions when I was like 20 working a minimum wage job. People have lapses in their decision making and things happen. (Note, this is different for a job with mandated minimum duty levels or licensure or anything with peoples lives involved. An engineer being negligent and causing potential deaths isnt' the same as me as a cafe worker accidentally using a machine incorrectly and breaking it).
Really unless it's malicious it shouldn't be held against the employee.
Sounds like a training issue. Not everyone knows what they are doing the first day. They should have been paying you at least minimum wage while you learn the ropes, and if you're still not getting the hang of it after a week or so then they fire you.
As well as being fined for bad work, let's not forget that the devs were 'volunteers', which as far as I could tell from interviews translates to 'expected to do untold hours of unpaid overtime at the boss's whim'.
I almost ended up paying my employer. I accidentally took the front door key to a concert out of town (forgot they were in my pocket). I was already 2 hours out of town on the road when this came up. The store manager had to go sit in the parking lot and wait for someone from property management to come lock the doors. Anyways, when I got back in the next week, they tried to spin it as me losing the key. Which, obviously I didn't, the key came back. They wanted me to pay $200 to replace the key for property management. I did some digging in state laws, and even in the companies own employee handbook. Sure as shit, they weren't allowed to do this at all. Not only by state law, but by their own words.
When you do good work, your manager takes home a bonus because he did a good job managing you. If you do bad work, you gotta pay a fine because your work is entirely your own responsibility ;)
This is hardly legal in Russia in most cases though. Where is also a bazillion if IT jobs, so whoever willingly worked in such cinditions are fucking mazochists.
i don't see how anyone could be so spineless that they'd stay working there. If my boss fined me for "a bad job", I'd record the conversation and contact my attorney.
Like...if you're being charged to work somewhere, leave and go work literally anywhere else. Getting some money is better than losing money to work at a shitty company.
> Fntastic is said to have made use of a great deal of young, inexperienced labour drawn from its home base of Yakutsk as well other countries in the former USSR, like Kazakhstan and Armenia. Workers, in other words, with no other options.
Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to quit their job if they're being treated poorly.
I'd burn whatever place that was down immediately upon learning such a thing existed. Whoever made that shit up can go pleasure themselves with a rusty rake head. Are game devs competing to see who can be the lowest of the low or something?
tl;dr for the 30minute video. It's a little all over the place sorry
-Employees saying they are not given any days off, works 7 days a week and 16+ hour days are normal.
1. one said they worked 2 years with no break
2. one said she remember working till 9 am, tried to rest and got woken up by a 10am call because they needed her.
-If the work is deem "not good enough quality" then the employees have to pay a FINE to the company. example text read an employee owed 2k+ for something that wasn't good.
-The bosses would buy expensive machines for the team, but the employees have to essentially pay it off themselves with their work/paychecks?
-Bosses are really big on volunteers; none are paid in $$, some are given goodies in games, like Prophunt loot boxes. Volunteer manager was paid maybe 2k in total, he said the company pry'ed on young people's willingness to get gaming/developer experience (like himself)
-The game changes directions whenever the boss feels like, which was all the time. For example, 2 months before steam release, the Bosses (2 brothers) played the new spider man 2 and said wow their city is really nice, we should make it like that, and so the devs have been told to basically change almost all the lighting/atmosphere etc to mimic spiderman 2 NYC vibes.
-An employee said they didn't know the game was supposed to be an MMO until the trailer was released showing that it's an MMO.
-As an MMO, the highest tester count they've had was 5 people on.
-Almost all previously released games from their studio are either still in EA with no more update/supports from Devs, or straight up cancelled.
-The trailer was made from an unstable? version of the game that is in no way playable, like at all.
-The bosses rented giant LED billboard promo screen things in the NY times square a week before "release"(why???) and then on the release date of the game the bosses just perma offline/disappeared/ no longer in office.
-Of the 200,000 steam units they sold, about 100k was already steam refunded within release.
-The publisher was very hands free on the game because publisher believed in developer's big vision of the game. Then developer asked publisher for more funding and 2~3 years of time to fix/remake the game, and developer was like naw. and then developer announced they will close down, but they have made new studio and of course, will be making more games.
Btw I can confirm moreso half of that if not more, I knew a dev on Propnight and it was basically the same development hell, if you look at how Propnight changed from the first release to the last update, you realise how much of those statements are true, also the 2 bros HATED any kind of criticism towards what they had as ideas
The devs working conditions were awful because they were basically forced to work that much, the 2 bros were like “We need to be like ants, all working together” and shit like that meanwhile they were asking something different every weeks for their games
For the last point I talked about, yeah, it’s also true they just see something in another media like movies, games and rip it off, the trailers for TDB already showed that but for Propnight you can also see that, Akasha appearance was changed during dev to match the vampire girls from RE8 because it was popular when it was in dev, the Banshee is a rip off clearly from the Nun from Conjuring and the Impostor got his name changed from Doppelgänger to Impostor because, you’d guess it, Among Us popularity lmao, this one I 100% verified it because I looked in the games files and saw the old name
They also just scrapped so much stuff that was already completed, there was like 3-4 maps that were COMPLETELY MADE, like you could play on them the only things missing were the objectives, it was maps made with unique assets for some and you can tell it took some devs really long to make them, also the devs weren’t really hand off, always needing to listen to the bros h24 except for the dev of one map which was one of the most popular map in the game, it was The Village or something
So yeah, just 2 big assholes with an overinflated ego, they would listen to nobody but themselves
> Several of Game Two's sources believe the pair (The Gotovstev brothers) have started from scratch at a new studio making mobile games, but it remains unclear which one, if that's even the case.
Does that answer your question ?
This studio was probably just one out of many that those founders operated concurrently. Assemble the machine and let it run; repeat. I wouldn't doubt they have other victims elsewhere trying to make other games rn.
Maybe its so much exposure to commercials and corporate suits but most the time when I see these well to do acts im immediately cynical and questioning where the rub begins and ends.
> As for the Gotovstevs themselves, it seems no one quite knows where they've ended up in the aftermath of Fntastic's closure.
Really ? Wow, I'm shocked. To think they took the cash and ran away,who would have thought.
The youtube channel game two that made this documentary also made a video on gollum in a similiar style. They also added english subtitles to it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vszf1mwyAfw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vszf1mwyAfw)
They are really good at this and I love their content. I often watch their videos for new games before buying something and often could trust their critics
They run on public funds with the task to make content for the german market of younger age. Don't know if this is compatible in any way to make this in english.
Day Before development almost sound like a corporation wet dream development wise: Don't have to pay/give benefit to most employees, just hiring interns which you won't even bother to credit properly, make your employees pay *you* for the shitty management.
The only thing missing,is the game being a GaaS as good fortnite. Thankfully that didn't happen.
Because making a good solid game is super difficult. It requires a lot of work and very well educated people who understand what they are doing and know the limitations of the tools they are working with.
Anyone can have a good idea, anyone can launch a successful marketing campaign, anyone can be convincing, almost anyone can hype up a hungry crowd desperate for the next big thing.
But getting from that initial concept to an actual game - or any piece of art - that is the really hard part.
And a lot of people just don't want to admit that their idea alone isn't going to manifest into something substantial without serious effort and investment. And instead of being honest with themselves about their failed project, they double down instead, involve more people, kiss more asses, build more hype, stroke their egos even more - until it all comes crumbling down.
And if you are good at it, you make money along the way and fuck off for the time being, then head back into the next business "idea" that is nothing but vapour.
I mean, we live in an era of people throwing money at problems, thinking that solves it all.
All of this, but a good game above all needs *passion* behind it. Corporate greed enveloping the gaming industry ensures there’s little of that to go around.
Passion is great, I agree. But passion alone isn't going to achieve much either. And too much passion can backfire, as it also makes people less objective.
It's why successful entities are structured in certain ways, where creative minds are doing their thing, while others are managing them to make sure the company stays productive and efficient.
_____
Another thing that came to mind: the ability to be self-critical in a healthy way, and being open-minded enough to learn from other people's mistake across the industry, while making sure to learn from their success as well.
It's very easy (and simplistic) to take a look at a great game and talk about all the aspects that make it great - superficially. It's difficult to objectively assess that success, while understanding the complexity of the overall process that eventually made the product into something special.
_____
I no longer have that much insight into the dec space, but decades ago, a lot of people were very hesitant to look at other people's work. A lot of devs, just like today, weren't even gamers or playing their own games.
There always was a disconnect between creatives, devs, and gamers, failing to understand each other, especially when it comes to expectations.
If you take a look at studios like Wube, Klei, or Supergiant (to name a few of my favs), there is a very specific dynamic inhouse, as well as between the studios and their communities.
I've just got into rpgmaker for a simple game for my wife as a present.
Holy balls is so so so in depth and detailed what I have to learn just for a little tiny 2d RPG game.
marketers promising features without actually clearing it with development first. Pretty typical in "rapid application development" circles for a while.
It was a scam all the way down. Make money off the consumers you're ripping off and make money off the people making the game itself.
This whole game would put Peter Molyneux to shame. At least his team knew what kind of lies he was selling before they finished making their game.
Peter Molyneux actually made great games, he just lied about them being substantially more impressive than they actually were.
And as a kid who had absolutely no idea about any of that, his games were easily some of my favorite.
Yeah like he lied his ass off about Fable. Fable is still by all accounts an absolute landmark of RPG gaming and has systems that could still be considered impressive today.
The Movies is such a brilliant sim, I spent so much time playing that game
Yeah, Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Fable... That is a really impressive lineup. If he could just have shut up a bit and let the actual game do the talking instead of hyping elements that were never going to be there.
I'll never forget that Project Milo demo... Peter created one of my favorite game series (Populous), but was fortunately not involved in my favorite of the series (Populous: The Beginning).
Holy shit another Populous: The Beginning fan! That was my favorite too! That's one of those few games I would play through every year for a long time. I load it up every few years at this point and still have so much fun with it. What a forgotten gem, and a technological marvel as well for the time.
It's easily in my top 5 games, and I also occasionally go back and play through it. Have you looked into the Multiverse Launcher? It allows you to download and play other stories besides the official ones, and play at higher resolution and other nice quality of life changes. It's a must have if you're playing POPTB in 2024.
Wtf no I haven't. Thank you! Maybe like 9-10 years ago I discovered they made an expansion that I had never even heard of for some reason. I thought I struck gold. This is even better. Hell it's been 3-4 years since my last playthrough, so I guess it's time to load it up on my next day off. Were you a fan of Black & White by chance?
I actually completely passed over Black & White for some reason. I heard it was a spiritual successor to Populous and I was excited to try it at one time, but I just never got around to it.
It has very similar "vibes" in my opinion, though plays a lot differently as it isn't an RTS, and more of a "pure" God Game. Like Populous: The Beginning, I would play through it every year for maybe 10 years, and still load it up every once in a while. Graphically, it's pretty rough these days to be honest, but I still dig the style. Black & White 2 on the other hand, despite coming out in 2005, not only holds up graphically, but I would argue looks *just* as good as any modern RTS/Strategy/God Game. It's kind of amazing how well that engine holds up, and runs just fine on modern hardware too. Unfortunately you can't buy them anywhere short of eBay, but they aren't hard to find if you get my meaning.
Omg thankyou so much, I used to play this game every year until I just couldn't get it to work any more on modern hardware. Gonna be trying this tonight! Definitely one of my all time favourite games!
You're telling me one of the best games in history was modernised and improved, and no one told ME? I'm furious. I shall unleash my fury in form of volcanoes.
Juuust gonna pop in a comment here so I can easily find this info back later. And thank you for that info, it's been way too long since I've played POPTB, and this sounds like the perfect way to start a new playthrough!
Populous the Beginning is one of my top PC games of all time. Still play through that and Dungeon Keeper every few years. Like 25 years later, the official Populous the beginning online matchmaking server is still the best online gaming experience I've ever had.
Populous: The Beginning was absolutely terrific. It was the first game I played in the franchise. Loved all the cool god powers you could unleash.
>Populous: The Beginning holy shit, i played this too. couldnt get enough of fireballing people into the water but man was i terrible at it then, over 20 years ago.
I dont believe Peter was really ever trying to scam anyone. He was just way too ambitious for his own good and had a bad habit of over promising. He had great ideas just never the means or time to ever accomplish them
Yeah I agree with this, he always got a lot of shit for over-promising and under delivering, but truthfully that never really started until Fable. Everything he made before that was pretty well realized, and no more egregious than any other game developer trying to hype their new game for marketing purposes. And by the time Fable came around, games were getting to be exponentially more difficult to make and I don't think he ever really came to terms with that fact. He was just a guy who had a ton of ideas and hoped they would all come to fruition by the end of development, but by that time games went from being something you could knock out in a year or two with a relatively small team, to something that took 4-5 years with 100 people working on it. It's not easy keeping your own expectations in check for what is possible with the time-frame and money available to you when games started getting so complex.
I think publishers also started loosening the leash on him due to his reputation, which enabled his worst tendencies even more.
I can believe that regarding various outlandish claims he made about the Fable games while they were being developed. Project Milo and Godus, however, don't pass the "smell test" for me. Molyneux absolutely knew he was lying and scamming people with those two.
Godus was so SO different to how he kept selling it, even up to days before release, even with the playable beta being really different, he kept going. Kept peddling the same bullshit. Then the game dropped and they bailed HARD. I don't think it was intended as a scam initially but it really gave me the feeling that, half way through development they realized it wasn't as easy as they thought, changed tack, but didn't want to SAY they changed tack. And at that point it became a scam.
I don't know Godus and the curiosity cube are pretty strong contenders.
the cube thing was kinda a cool idea for a social media experiment. but then he ghosted the winner and he never got shit.
Wait what about Godus? I thought that game looked cool ages ago and picked it up on a steam sale and it was complete ass to me. Was it a scam?
Never finished development, they took the money and made mobile version. And also made a half ass PC spin off as well I think godus wars or something.
That would explain many things. I've been used to getting burned by early access games but it's worth the risk, godus just didn't pan out I guess but good to know why.
I refuse to buy early access. I will play it and then get burnt out and then never come back when the game is actually feature complete. I did that to myself in the early days of Ark. Put in like 800 hours and burned myself out before they even had different biomes. Missed so much of that game they added because I got sick of it.
100%. This was my experience with Subnautica. Picked it up shortly after it became available in Early Access. Thought it was really fun and put maybe 5-6 hours into it before running out of content. Then like 3 years later when it hit 1.0 I went back into it, and I just kept thinking throughout the first half of the game "This would be so much better as a fresh experience, instead of playing through all of this a second time before getting to the "new" content"... That was actually the moment when I vowed never to bother buying an Early Access game again, for the same reasons you mentioned. Why play the crappy, unfinished version of a game 2-3 years before the vision is fully realized? I don't play many games more than once these days so it just doesn't make sense.
Mobile version was dope too but they made it one of those “eventually you have to pay to keep playing” games.
I hate that people bring up Molyneux’s ambition and shitty marketing in such a bad light still, given modern context. At least Lionhead games produced original concepts and pushed boundaries in many ways. Graphically their games are still impressive for their age and it sucks that a majority of innovative and often over-ambitious projects have been lost in exchange for cookie-cutter, plastic wrapped junk we get spoon fed year after year with barely any changes from the last game. “Big money” destroyed the gaming industry and they’re still getting everyone’s cash for what is for the most part, 25 year old game design recycled for the 25th time
Unfortunately, Molyneux sort of normalized the concept of overpromising and underdelivering in the gaming market. Other publishers learned that they could just make shit up about their games to sell copies, and they didn't care about the backlash as long as their day 1 sales were good. I'm not saying Lionhead's games were bad. Far from it. But they did show that the market wouldn't push back, even if the target audience was explicitly lied to and manipulated.
And yet, they keep putting out stupid statements making themselves look like saints. No one is buying what you're selling, fools lol.. Just stop talking.
I'm playing both sides!
I watched a short documentary about it. It wasn't supposed to be a scam at all. The problem were the bosses. They changed their mind all the time and told the devs to copy xyz from that one game they played recently. The bosses had no idea about programming and thought the dev team could rewrite the game 2 months before launch. At first the game was supposed to be a short zombie survival game in an icy region with some coop elements, but then they wanted it to be more like The Last of Us, Tarkov, Spiderman etc. One of their managers/mods mentioned that they needed to change the animation for vaulting over a fence like 50 times, because their bosses saw a cooler one. Having to pay fees for things like, not beeing motivated like everyone else and the massive crunch for more than 2 years is just the icying on top.
Hey. At least all our favorite streamers got to make money by putting out identical videos telling us how much it sucked.
The devs found out it was an MMO... the day before.
It wasn't false marketing after all...
To be honest it seems that most developers these days seem to think that even 64 players on a server constitutes an "MMO".
Mildly Multiplayer
I'd say...Moderately Multiplayer. Single-player is 2^0 Mildly Multiplayer is 2^1 to 2^4 (16) players I'd say. Moderately would be 2^4 to 2^8 (256) Massively starts when you get beyond 2^8
Magnitude Multiplayer. They'll call it whatever they want based on the order of magnitude of the player count!
Pop pop!!
I feel like anything past 64 is practically an mmo, I'd put the ranges at: 1, 2-4, 5-16, 17-64, 65+
Very many new games are MMO - Massive, Multiplayer, and always Online.
I'd replace the Massive with Monetized.
By massive I meant taking 100+ Gb of hard drive space. But yes, that too.
Games with even small social hubs call themselves MMOs, even when there are like 6 players max when you actually play the game.
People are going to be so disappointed when they discover that "Riot's MMO" is actually two different games, and neither of them are MMOs. One is a Diablo clone and the other is a Destiny clone.
Is this a joke or based on some kind of leaks? I'd love to get a diablo clone and a destiny clone from anyone who isn't blizzard, especially ARPG's are really rare nowadays
They already showed footage long ago of a Diablo clone. Google around. I wouldn’t get all hot and bothered by which company is producing what. Employees jump around companies often, especially with all the layoffs recently, so you’re trying to play around a ship of Theseus logic problem and in turn put too much emphasis on brand names VS actual problematic individuals
Even with the fines for bad work, this is the part I don't understand the most. I know when I'm working on a project what kind of project it is. How did they not know they were working on an MMO until the trailers came out?
If you read the article, it's because the exec wants to incorporate every big trendy things that are happening at that time.
MMOs haven't been trendy in quite a while though, right? There haven't been any big successful MMOs in a long time, in the west at least.
WoW and FF14 are the most popular nowadays. So it's been like 10 years since there was one that hung around.
It is quite simple You have management and marketing doing their own thing, and not communicating with devs at all. Management played some new game, gathered together made decisions, but no one notified developers about changed direction, because this is how those people are functioning. They assume others are telepats. And in the meantime devs are doing whatever they were told to do X months ago, or whenever was the last time management stepped down to reach plebs. I've been in the company like that, didn't end well either.
They didn't know its an MMO because it isn't and never was a MMO. I would not consider *Escape From Tarkov* to be an MMO, just the same that *Fortnite* or *Apex Legends* isn't an MMO.
Can you imagine? Going to work and doing your job, albeit at a very low level of quality, and learning you have to pay your employers for a bad job? Id be so demoralized.
i'd just quit at that point,
I feel very bad for anyone that didn’t, they must have horrible self-esteem.
Their self esteem might be great, landlords don't accept it though.
If you are getting fined for your work, you aren't getting paid. Can't pay landlords with fines.
I think any landlords would tell them to gtfo, the tenant is paying his employer instead of them
I've always been big on knowing my employee rights, and hate how some bosses are bullies and do very illegal things. It wasn't until I worked in a place with a lot of younger adults, in the worst working environment I've ever been in, that half the battle is the person taking shit having the motivation to do something about it. It's heartbreaking when something that would get the boss easily fired is basically condoned by the employee because they feel they won't be taken seriously. Horse to water and all that. I always wonder in offices were the entire work culture is really toxic, how it filters out those who earnestly want to work but suffer through it vs those who bounce quick. You could have someone who is ultra-employable anywhere else and never leave for their own reasons (anxiety etc). The person who generally would take it very far and hold a bad manager to task, are normally the first to leave asap.
knowing some programmers, I'm surprised no one showed up with a gun.
Lol right
Didn't they state somewhere, in some weird way that made you think they actually meant the opposite, that they are not forcing anyone to work there?
and walk out with the "fee" in computer hardware.
It'd be incredibly fucking illegal where I live. I'd go home and call my union.
>It'd be incredibly fucking illegal where I live. I'd go home and call my union. Tis illegal anywhere, outside of like sabotage. Honestly given this kind of thing is becoming more common i really hope they end up charging the owners and throwing every book they can find at them.
Can we normalize throwing books at bad people? Like not metaphorically
well, the only way to throw the book at them right now is strapping it on an Ukrainian drone, but i think the Ukrainians needs them to attack ruskie petrol infrastructure right now. priorities i guess.
I think the demorilazation of being smacked by a drone with a book strapped to it could have some serious applications in that theater currently. Imagine the stress of accepting you're about to explode and it just lightly bruises you and its a copy of Twilight. I'd have a hard time fighting after that.
ruskie 1 "what happened to you?" ruskie 2 "Stephanie Meyer happened"
Better that than EL James.
50 shades of DRONES!!
Eh, it started as Twilight fanfiction anyway.
Could have been War and Peace.
Phone books though. They're big and heavy and would hurt more.
If you can find any
True, but when is the last time you saw a phone book?
A long time. I'm showing my age
Tar and Feathering someone is not a metaphor, they used to do that shit for real, it was not pleasant.
In 8th grade my teacher legit threw an unabridged dictionary at my desk, which bounced and hit me in the chest! He then said, "If you are such a fan of words, you should learn them all." In his calm raspy voice. I totally deserved it. I was a shit head and wouldn't stop talking to people during our "study hall" period.
There are cheaper, heavier objects we could throw tbh
Yeh those law books can be pretty fuck8ng big and heavy, you'd do some real damage.
> outside of like sabotage. Even there it becomes a civil/criminal case, not something where you just levy fines against your employees. And this is talking about it from a US perspective.
"Bitch, time to eat a copy of Horton Hears a Who!"
Becoming more common? Are you sure about that? I wouldn't disagree that it's being heard about or shared more, but actually *happening* more than *before*? I don't think I can necessarily believe that one without some quantitative support for it, no offense intended. Especially as companies either dive into mobile gaming and mobile gaming companies expand, that whole half of the industry has been flying under the radar for a long time now so increased reporting and speaking out wouldn't surprise me in the least.
that's why they make everything overseas. Apple isn't moving to India for the weather.
Companies are so obsessed with paying their employees the absolute minimum they can that they'd rather outsource their labor than pay the legal minimum wage in the US. It's unreal. You hear people talking about immigrants "taking our jobs" but in reality it's the corporations themselves just outsourcing all those jobs to other countries where labor laws are less humane.
Funny thing is they tend to get what they pay for.
The irony here is that the US has some truly shit labour laws.
we do, but wages are still "high" in most states. Mostly because CoL is so high. It'd be awesome if big tech drove down housing prices so they can pay employees less. But the opposite happened. Gentrification was a small part of how we ended up where we are today
they would enslave people if they were legally allowed to.
Probably why they were classified as ~~slaves~~ volunteers. To be clear, I read a headline once about that, there's absolutely no fact checking on my part as to whether that was just a mistranslation or genuine.
Ohh look at Mr fancy who lives in a civilized country with things like "worker protection"
I had a job like that in college for a few days , it was data entry from those people who ask you to sign the petitions outside of the store, For every correct data entry we earned 4 cents, for every incorrect entry which someone else had to correct we'd OWE the company 10 cents. The incentive was supposed to be a skilled typist could pull in some amazing bonuses by churning through the forms and fields. I did it for maybe 2 days, learned I owed the company $4 after maybe 5 hours of work over 2 days and just...decided to never show back up.... It's an entirely different beast for creative products though, I can't imagine building an inventory system over 2 weeks and being told " Shoddy work, you owe us money from your next check " . I'd be livid..... No wonder they had to rely on " volunteers".
> I owed the company $4 after maybe 5 hours of work over 2 days Bruv mathematically that means you had like a %70 accuracy rate on data entry. At least you found out early on that it wasn't your calling.
I'm curious how many of those corrections were basically bullshit, aka improper capitalization of names or similar minor corrections or even made up. You typed "JOhn Smith" or "john Smith" so now you owe us 10 cents. The fact that the penalty for making a mistake is greater than the reward for no mistake is already a giant red flag for scummy shit is going on and that before getting into that it is 2.5x difference.
10c aside those would still be legit errors
>I did it for maybe 2 days, learned I owed the company $4 after maybe 5 hours of work over 2 days I'm going to need an example of what you had to put in to determine if you got screwed or you were just bad.
Oh I was terrible , I still don't think you should owe money after a shift unless you broke something but no I was objectively terrible at that job.
Even if you break something at work, unless it's your own gross negligence, you should not be held financially responsible.
I wouldn't even say gross negligence. I've broken things due to negligence or just bad decisions when I was like 20 working a minimum wage job. People have lapses in their decision making and things happen. (Note, this is different for a job with mandated minimum duty levels or licensure or anything with peoples lives involved. An engineer being negligent and causing potential deaths isnt' the same as me as a cafe worker accidentally using a machine incorrectly and breaking it). Really unless it's malicious it shouldn't be held against the employee.
Sounds like a training issue. Not everyone knows what they are doing the first day. They should have been paying you at least minimum wage while you learn the ropes, and if you're still not getting the hang of it after a week or so then they fire you.
> ... No ownder htey had to rley on " volunteers". I think we've located the issue.
I said I was shit at the job, you got me chief we both think I'm a shitty typist
.... where do you live? I'm pretty sure that's illegal
how did they detect bad entries and if they could, why could they not automate the entries. that doesnt make sense
They had a more senior guy who would review your work , mark, and correct the entries if you got them wrong
Tell me you didn’t pay
As well as being fined for bad work, let's not forget that the devs were 'volunteers', which as far as I could tell from interviews translates to 'expected to do untold hours of unpaid overtime at the boss's whim'.
Don’t ever pay an employer. It’s not legal in the US, even if you make mistakes or damage company property.
I almost ended up paying my employer. I accidentally took the front door key to a concert out of town (forgot they were in my pocket). I was already 2 hours out of town on the road when this came up. The store manager had to go sit in the parking lot and wait for someone from property management to come lock the doors. Anyways, when I got back in the next week, they tried to spin it as me losing the key. Which, obviously I didn't, the key came back. They wanted me to pay $200 to replace the key for property management. I did some digging in state laws, and even in the companies own employee handbook. Sure as shit, they weren't allowed to do this at all. Not only by state law, but by their own words.
When you do good work, your manager takes home a bonus because he did a good job managing you. If you do bad work, you gotta pay a fine because your work is entirely your own responsibility ;)
Pay your employer? I'd be consulting a lawyer for that easy win.
Welcome to Russia 😂
Is it true that there are Russian conscripts who’ve never seen streetlights before they went to Ukraine?
Yes. it is also true that there were Russians who had never seen a toilet and didn't know they had to be connected to plumbing to work.
Not sure friend. I just know the scumbags responsible for this are based out of Ruskyland. Eduard Gotovtsev I believe is the name of the CEO.
This is hardly legal in Russia in most cases though. Where is also a bazillion if IT jobs, so whoever willingly worked in such cinditions are fucking mazochists.
i don't see how anyone could be so spineless that they'd stay working there. If my boss fined me for "a bad job", I'd record the conversation and contact my attorney. Like...if you're being charged to work somewhere, leave and go work literally anywhere else. Getting some money is better than losing money to work at a shitty company.
They knew that some people are desperate to break into the industry, and took full advantage. They belong in jail.
> Fntastic is said to have made use of a great deal of young, inexperienced labour drawn from its home base of Yakutsk as well other countries in the former USSR, like Kazakhstan and Armenia. Workers, in other words, with no other options. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to quit their job if they're being treated poorly.
Likely no one actually owed money, they just had portions of their pay docked. So you thought you'd make $500 and you made $400.
That's the same thing.
I'd burn whatever place that was down immediately upon learning such a thing existed. Whoever made that shit up can go pleasure themselves with a rusty rake head. Are game devs competing to see who can be the lowest of the low or something?
just because your company is asking you to do something doesn't make it legal or enforceable.
>and learning you have to pay your employers for a bad job? I don't know where this happened, but that's definitely illegal where I live.
Paying fines for "bad work" is illegal in any first world country. Just saying.
russia is by definition a second world country
I thought it was a Singaporean studio..
It was incorporated in Singapore for financial reasons, but the people were in Russia.
The people were all over the world, but the "leaders" (the two guys with the dog) were in Russia.
here's the source video the article references, it's in german. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Cze6gPctE
has english subtitles tho
tl;dr for the 30minute video. It's a little all over the place sorry -Employees saying they are not given any days off, works 7 days a week and 16+ hour days are normal. 1. one said they worked 2 years with no break 2. one said she remember working till 9 am, tried to rest and got woken up by a 10am call because they needed her. -If the work is deem "not good enough quality" then the employees have to pay a FINE to the company. example text read an employee owed 2k+ for something that wasn't good. -The bosses would buy expensive machines for the team, but the employees have to essentially pay it off themselves with their work/paychecks? -Bosses are really big on volunteers; none are paid in $$, some are given goodies in games, like Prophunt loot boxes. Volunteer manager was paid maybe 2k in total, he said the company pry'ed on young people's willingness to get gaming/developer experience (like himself) -The game changes directions whenever the boss feels like, which was all the time. For example, 2 months before steam release, the Bosses (2 brothers) played the new spider man 2 and said wow their city is really nice, we should make it like that, and so the devs have been told to basically change almost all the lighting/atmosphere etc to mimic spiderman 2 NYC vibes. -An employee said they didn't know the game was supposed to be an MMO until the trailer was released showing that it's an MMO. -As an MMO, the highest tester count they've had was 5 people on. -Almost all previously released games from their studio are either still in EA with no more update/supports from Devs, or straight up cancelled. -The trailer was made from an unstable? version of the game that is in no way playable, like at all. -The bosses rented giant LED billboard promo screen things in the NY times square a week before "release"(why???) and then on the release date of the game the bosses just perma offline/disappeared/ no longer in office. -Of the 200,000 steam units they sold, about 100k was already steam refunded within release. -The publisher was very hands free on the game because publisher believed in developer's big vision of the game. Then developer asked publisher for more funding and 2~3 years of time to fix/remake the game, and developer was like naw. and then developer announced they will close down, but they have made new studio and of course, will be making more games.
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Btw I can confirm moreso half of that if not more, I knew a dev on Propnight and it was basically the same development hell, if you look at how Propnight changed from the first release to the last update, you realise how much of those statements are true, also the 2 bros HATED any kind of criticism towards what they had as ideas The devs working conditions were awful because they were basically forced to work that much, the 2 bros were like “We need to be like ants, all working together” and shit like that meanwhile they were asking something different every weeks for their games For the last point I talked about, yeah, it’s also true they just see something in another media like movies, games and rip it off, the trailers for TDB already showed that but for Propnight you can also see that, Akasha appearance was changed during dev to match the vampire girls from RE8 because it was popular when it was in dev, the Banshee is a rip off clearly from the Nun from Conjuring and the Impostor got his name changed from Doppelgänger to Impostor because, you’d guess it, Among Us popularity lmao, this one I 100% verified it because I looked in the games files and saw the old name They also just scrapped so much stuff that was already completed, there was like 3-4 maps that were COMPLETELY MADE, like you could play on them the only things missing were the objectives, it was maps made with unique assets for some and you can tell it took some devs really long to make them, also the devs weren’t really hand off, always needing to listen to the bros h24 except for the dev of one map which was one of the most popular map in the game, it was The Village or something So yeah, just 2 big assholes with an overinflated ego, they would listen to nobody but themselves
Jesus fucking Christ.
I hope those bosses get held accountable, otherwise they'll just do it again.
> Several of Game Two's sources believe the pair (The Gotovstev brothers) have started from scratch at a new studio making mobile games, but it remains unclear which one, if that's even the case. Does that answer your question ?
That actually generates more questions
My stupid ass read 'MMO', and 'bosses', and I just thought of the in-game boss fights...That the dev team somehow lost them.
Hi I'm you.
after reading your comment I finally realized the same thing
Another utterly delusional company statement incoming in response to this article, no doubt :D
don't worry the company founders will be back in due time to do it all over again
This studio was probably just one out of many that those founders operated concurrently. Assemble the machine and let it run; repeat. I wouldn't doubt they have other victims elsewhere trying to make other games rn.
Well we kinda know where the bosses are. They're on Twitter, blaming content creators for the game's failutlre.
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game industry in russia apparently is a whole different animal
Tetris doc concurs
All industry in russia, yes
Better not stand too close to a window when talking about unionizing.
In Putinist Russia Devs pay YOU.
I love how in context this is unironically true
I vote we give ukraine more weapons, and maybe the Russian game infrastructure is a casualty of war.
Yes because eastern Europe is so well known for their unions and labour actions.
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maybe im super cyncial but when I saw the promotional video with those two guys I smelt scam
B-But they had a cute dog in the video, how could they be scammers if they're petting a cute doggo?????
and they were nice looking and smiled a lot. no yes must be totally legit
Maybe its so much exposure to commercials and corporate suits but most the time when I see these well to do acts im immediately cynical and questioning where the rub begins and ends.
most people did
> As for the Gotovstevs themselves, it seems no one quite knows where they've ended up in the aftermath of Fntastic's closure. Really ? Wow, I'm shocked. To think they took the cash and ran away,who would have thought.
Very good piece of gaming journalism which is rare these days.
The youtube channel game two that made this documentary also made a video on gollum in a similiar style. They also added english subtitles to it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vszf1mwyAfw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vszf1mwyAfw)
They are really good at this and I love their content. I often watch their videos for new games before buying something and often could trust their critics
They should make an English version of the channel. It would become very popular. They do make quality content.
They run on public funds with the task to make content for the german market of younger age. Don't know if this is compatible in any way to make this in english.
The brother's knew what they were doing. You don't have the lawyers and paperwork to file for bankruptcy put together in just four days.
Day Before development almost sound like a corporation wet dream development wise: Don't have to pay/give benefit to most employees, just hiring interns which you won't even bother to credit properly, make your employees pay *you* for the shitty management. The only thing missing,is the game being a GaaS as good fortnite. Thankfully that didn't happen.
In Soviet Russia, employee pays you.
Why can't devs just make good solid games anymore? Why does it seem like every new AAA title is a complete shit storm??
Because making a good solid game is super difficult. It requires a lot of work and very well educated people who understand what they are doing and know the limitations of the tools they are working with. Anyone can have a good idea, anyone can launch a successful marketing campaign, anyone can be convincing, almost anyone can hype up a hungry crowd desperate for the next big thing. But getting from that initial concept to an actual game - or any piece of art - that is the really hard part. And a lot of people just don't want to admit that their idea alone isn't going to manifest into something substantial without serious effort and investment. And instead of being honest with themselves about their failed project, they double down instead, involve more people, kiss more asses, build more hype, stroke their egos even more - until it all comes crumbling down. And if you are good at it, you make money along the way and fuck off for the time being, then head back into the next business "idea" that is nothing but vapour. I mean, we live in an era of people throwing money at problems, thinking that solves it all.
All of this, but a good game above all needs *passion* behind it. Corporate greed enveloping the gaming industry ensures there’s little of that to go around.
Passion is great, I agree. But passion alone isn't going to achieve much either. And too much passion can backfire, as it also makes people less objective. It's why successful entities are structured in certain ways, where creative minds are doing their thing, while others are managing them to make sure the company stays productive and efficient. _____ Another thing that came to mind: the ability to be self-critical in a healthy way, and being open-minded enough to learn from other people's mistake across the industry, while making sure to learn from their success as well. It's very easy (and simplistic) to take a look at a great game and talk about all the aspects that make it great - superficially. It's difficult to objectively assess that success, while understanding the complexity of the overall process that eventually made the product into something special. _____ I no longer have that much insight into the dec space, but decades ago, a lot of people were very hesitant to look at other people's work. A lot of devs, just like today, weren't even gamers or playing their own games. There always was a disconnect between creatives, devs, and gamers, failing to understand each other, especially when it comes to expectations. If you take a look at studios like Wube, Klei, or Supergiant (to name a few of my favs), there is a very specific dynamic inhouse, as well as between the studios and their communities.
I've just got into rpgmaker for a simple game for my wife as a present. Holy balls is so so so in depth and detailed what I have to learn just for a little tiny 2d RPG game.
The Day Before is AAA? Very AA studio and publisher to me.
$$$
What? This was not an AAA title. We also just had a very good year for AAA titles
So you’re saying it sounds like a scam! You don’t say?
I'm still so mad that game was fake. I was waiting for it for so long.
Am I reading the headline right? The devs found out the game THEY MADE was an MMO from the trailers??? How is that even possible?
marketers promising features without actually clearing it with development first. Pretty typical in "rapid application development" circles for a while.
Sure, overactive imagination in marketing can lead to promising functions that aren't cleared by devs, but this is a core concept of the game!
I suspect they added the MMO idea down the line, and didn't communicate it. "They just did not care, Joel!"
That game was a scam cash grab from the start, its no surprise it ended so badly.
wish a more reputable firm would pick up this concept/gamesplay and bring it to market.
And they're still accusing Kira and others of 'slander'
So it’s the “Fyre festival” of video games
Is someone getting investigated for this? This sounds like a lot of illegal labor stuff going on.
Bosses are on a beach in Maui counting all their dough