Fans angrily discussing Peter Molyneux and 22cans’ actions regarding Godus have given way to a discussion on whether crowdfunding is a desirable outlet for funding games at all.
This discussion has come out mainly on the heels of this article revealing the studio has mostly moved on to a new project, while giving over development to a smaller group, headed by one of Godus’ own backers (who isn’t getting paid anything, to boot).
Peter and that backer, Konrad Naszynski, recently came up on a video explaining the state of development. Peter took all the blame, and promised the game is still a going concern, with Konrad and his group getting full support, but of course, it’s hard to take his word at face value at this point.
The opinions on this 500+ reddit are varied, and very strong. A huge number of commenters state to not trust Molyneux. Some bring up Tim Schafer in the same breath, for Spacebase DF-9 but also partly for how he handled Broken Age. Disappointingly, there are also a lot stating not to trust Kickstarter.
Some redditors also sought to share their opinions on the nature of Kickstarter, and crowdfunding in general. As this thread points out, Kickstarter defers accountability to the backers. This redditor suggests backers should not think of their crowdfunds as investments. This commenter, deferring to Colin Moriarty over at Kinda Funny/formerly IGN, questions if Kickstarter should even exist, given the opportunities for abuse.
Of course, Kickstarter has its defenders too, with many in this thread referring to successfully funded and released games such as Shadowrun and Wasteland. Some backers have seen their crowdfunds fail and succeed. For many of them, this failure is not reason enough to end the enterprise of crowdfunding games.
For the final word on this topic, we will defer to this commenter, a Godus backer himself, who shares a cautionary tale everyone who has an interest in crowdfunds should take lessons from.
As one of the Steam backers, the only point at which the community became enraged was not because it was PM – but because they used the PC Steam platform to develop an iOS game, stripped a bunch of features and then even shat on their kickstarter promises/rewards. Even the thing about getting an intern to head the team and write the story now is just becoming unnecessarily provocative of the consumer base.
I think that the smugness of responding to people's anger at him is what allows PM and his kin to pull this shit. On the Steam forums, two community managers have quit, the mods are barricaded behind ghost edits and the developers only drop in to pick their battles at rebutting overly-emotional statements.
But on Reddit, the attitude is markedly different. Godus was released on Kickstarter years ago, not recently, as such it was a time when things like FTL or other solid projects were in full swing. Having a go at someone just because you might have had better informed attitudes will only make sure that these stories of fraudulent behavior don't make it here on Reddit but are instead confined to Steam – which is what PM wants.
The 22Cans forums are down. Emails are bouncing. They're locking down their hatches. There are really weird shills trying to turf the discussions. Reddit is being judgmental. PM is making paper money banks twenty-twenties.
The only reason why he responded with a video and this became a thing is because RPS ran an article on it. Keep that in mind and let PM serve as an example to KS and Steam that this Early Access shit isn't working in its current way. You aren't going to change the masses of idiot casuals that are happy to buy 'gems' for $50 a pop – but you can support the change on platforms to actually start respecting consumer protections.
