When 18 year old Bryan Henderson 'won' Curiosity in May 2013, he was promised "riches" and "life-changing" experiences from 22Cans' next game, Godus. So far, he hasn't received a cent and the experience has been far from life-changing.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Henderson said he was flown down to London to play Godus at an early stage of development and kept in contact with 22Cans regularly, the only problem was they never replied.
"After a month or two of winning, I would email them every month, purely because I expected more communication from them, but it wasn't happening. I would ask, so, what's happening? When am I going to find out more stuff? What's going to happen, specifically? They were taking their time to answer. They would say, we need to do this first and tell you afterwards.
"Since I won and a year after, I would email them as a ritual thing, every month, just to get some kind of update. Eventually I was like, they're not being professional at all. Communication is non-existent, so I'm not even going to try any more."
Henderson was suppoed to become "god of gods" in Godus, determining the rules and earning some of the profits once the game's multiplayer was introduced. He's still waiting, and Eurogamer's sources say they doubt multiplayer will ever be implemented.
"All I wanted to know was, when will it happen?" he commented. "They couldn't really tell me. They said it would happen when the game was finished."
In January of last year, Bryan was sent an email 22Cans' financial chief Peter Murphy and was told someone from the studio would be in touch, he never heard from them again.
22Cans' founder Peter Molyneux has now apologised to Byan, at least, for the lack of communication.
"That's pretty poor, isn't it?" Molyneux told Eurogamer. "He should have a contact here. That's pretty shoddy for us to not keep him posted. I totally and absolutely and categorically apologise. That isn't good enough and I'll take it on my own shoulders that I should have made sure he was communicated with. We will from today onwards do that.
"It's just on a list. The trouble is, it's very easy to forget about things that are further down the list when you're so busy with things at the top of the list. I think it's unfair on him. We should keep him posted. I will speak to him myself."
Godus was released on Steam Early Access in September 2013 and arrived on the App Store in May 2014, a year after Henderson won Curiosity. It was around this time that 22Cans issued a development roadmap which outlined the 'Hubworld' feature of Godus, which would enable multiplayer.
Despite everything, Henderson is more resigned than angry about what's happened, and he's still hopeful something will come from this situation – not that he expects anything to.
It was recently revealed that most of 22Cans has moved onto a new project, The Trial.
