Layoffs Hit Peter Molyneux's Studio 22cans

Molyneux can‘t let it go. he is just not important for gamers anymore...he is a myth.

I love the tenuous Nintendo link at the end there.

But probably reflective of many other places right now.

Does anybody really care?

I feel for the employees, losing a job for anyone is terrible news - but at the end of the day Peter Molyneux lied through his teeth about Godus, I was one of the chumps who backed it on Kickstarter and got a game that wasn't even slightly finished and they abandoned development in the blink of an eye. You can't run a business on over-promising and not even half delivering, so f**k hhis business and I hope the employees find good roles elsewhere.

I still want to play Legacy.
It's his most structurally ambitious game in a looong time, and I'm looking forward to seeing where he's going with it.

@Pod first time huh?

I have never heard of this man.

But he sure sounds... interesting, to say the least.

@Ooyah Would you trust this man now he's the punchline to at least one joke in every video from Larry Bundy?

It's a shame for the employees, but Molyneux needs to give up.
He's had enough chances...and disasters.

Peter, I need the original Bullfrog's Theme Park game on the Switch. Thanks.

@lovesushi He is a legend, not a myth.
I guess you missed out on the Amiga/PC in 1980's and 1990's days and Bullfrog?
Powermonger, Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Theme Park, Populopus, Dungeon Keeper +++

Are these games only a myth, or do they exist for real?

@Ventilator I played every single one of his games. And now he is a myth.

His games were amazing, Dungeon Keeper is still one of my favorite memories as a child. But his style doesn't seem to have evolved with the times that well.

@fafonio
Nah, I've been playing his games since Populous.
But I wasn't ever a big fan of the things he did with Lion Head. And I didn't feel like playing the silly cube game, or his recent discount version of Populous.

He's got my attention with Legacy.

@Mince
He's talking about whether they want to make the effort of porting the game, and whether they believe it will go down well with the Switch audience. That's a "gate" in the sense that it's a huge time investment.

And Yeah, Molyneux is responsible for amazing games like Theme Park and Theme Hospital, as well as the Dungeon Keeper and Black & White series.

this guy named himself after the running gag from guru larry lmao

@lovesushi At least some other part of Bullfrog is soon releasing a new game. "Evil Genius 2".

Populous and Fable were the only good games they made so far, the rest were just mobile garbage.

@Mince
Your first comment was a little too brief for me to understand any sarcasm, man. Sorry about that. ^^

But yeah, I get what you're saying with his worries being largely unfounded, but I do think he has a point concerning the general structure of the game. It's a slow, and very involved management sim, with tons of differet things on screen you can click at any one time. It's a tradional "PC game" , and about as far from Mario as you can get.

He's likely concerned about what it would take to make the game feel accessible and enjoyable on a console. And then he covers it up in classic Molyneux babble about being "fascinated" by his audience and the challenge.

That's wha tI got at least.

@Ghost_of_Hasashi

Populous is thirtyfive years ago, dude. ^^
If you remember that, don't you also remember Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper?

It always sucks to lose your job, but seriously, what else can you expect when you're working for a conman?

@Mountain_Man same can be said of pretty much every AAA publisher. if anything, someone like Bobby Kotick is an even bigger con artist, without the back-catalogue of classics which make Molyneux's fall from grace the stuff of Greek tragedy.

He made heaps of great games, I'm sick of all the hate he gets.

@Kimyonaakuma @Pod He also created an entire genre and made more great games them bad ones.

@Mince He created a genre, he made heaps of great games. Too many gaming novices think they know all from reading and watching click baity gaming journalists.

Bullfrog Studios had an incredible roster of games. Populous remains, over 30 years later, an amazing, landmark game that changed the industry. Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper - all legit hits with fans that they earned the loyalty of.

And then Molyneux did everything he could in the last 20 years to squander that loyalty.

Black and White was a fascinating idea that sort of worked, a little bit, and never lived up to its own hype. The Movies, Project Milo, and everything Fable after Fable 2 were massively overpromised underachievers that he promised the world from and simply shrugged off after delivering mediocrity (or in the case of Milo, delivering nothing).

And Curiosity and Godus were just literally scams. He told everyone what they were going to be and how they'd interconnect, made a ton of money off those claims, and then... didn't do it. Didn't do any of it. Waited years for RockPaperShotgun to track him down and finally say "hey were you ever planning to show any accountability for these apparent lies?" and the honest answer was basically "no, not really." Well, first he angrily swore up and down that they weren't lies, and then when they showed the extensive receipts, he sulked about it and claimed he was going to stop doing interviews. And then didn't.

He's an idea man, and I have no problem believing that at least some of the time he believes his own hype. And when he's paired with talented developers who share his passion and have a workable scope, magic can happen. But that doesn't make it okay for him to have driven multiple huge projects right off cliffs since the early Fable games, and people probably should not be putting him in charge of things anymore.

@sirmrguitardude
Absolutely.
I'm still kind of a fan of his.
I'm sure Legacy will be, at the very least, an interesting game to play.

@Mince
Maybe don't be up in people's face about making assumptions, when you're so quick to pass judgment yourself.

Neither Curiosity, Godus or The Trail are as such failures. They just aren't what some people had hoped for either.