The Bitter Legacy of Peter Molyneux's Crypto Gamble

This week, gamers are being asked to pay $25 for early access to Masters of Albion, a god game that legendary designer Peter Molyneux says will be his swan song. But for those who sunk roughly $54 million in cryptocurrency into Molyneux's previous game, Legacy, the wounds of disappointment still linger. Players who spoke to Ars Technica described pouring thousands of dollars into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to buy into Molyneux's vision of a cutting-edge economic simulation and "play to earn" riches.

They claimed the final product was a shadow of what was promised, with a broken economic system that drove players away in droves within weeks of its 2023 launch. The game's collapse was swift and decisive, but not before Legacy rode the crypto hype wave to initial economic success. Molyneux himself acknowledged that the game's pre-sales provided the funding for Masters of Albion, saying in a 2024 interview that "[it] gave us the money to fund Masters of Albion...

That's what we used the majority of the money for." For those who lost out on Legacy, the memories of Molyneux's broken promises still sting. As the gaming community waits with bated breath for Masters of Albion, the question on everyone's mind is: will history repeat itself?