If you feel strongly about another game making money off of concepts of internet spaceships, then you might have some feelings about what Peter Molyneux and his studio 22cans is doing with their latest game, Legacy, a self-described “blockchain business sim” that lets players build and manage company towns, create products, and compete with other players to maximize profits while keeping workers in the town happy.
The blockchain aspect is tied to the ownership of digital land, where players start their towns. Plots of land are NFTs purchased with LegacyCoin, a newly minted cryptocurrency that is linked to the Ethereum blockchain. The idea is that products sold successfully during Events and business partnerships granted with other players who share a portion of LegacyCoin profits will result in real-world profit.
Ultimately, this means owning land is a big part of Legacy’s whole scheme. And that scheme has already proven to be a successful rat trap, as land NFT sales have already hit over £40 million, or over $53M. Without any actual game released.
In an interview with The Verge, Molyneux provides his usual brand of insight into Legacy’s mechanics, brushing off the negative connotation of company towns, pointing to the RMT auction house in Diablo III as a reason why using blockchain instead of a central item database is better, and lauding the benefits of blockchain ownership while also admitting that he has no idea what would happen to LegacyCoin if the game is shuttered.
We also want to point out that 22cans doesn’t exactly have a sterling game release history: The studio kicked out god games Godus and Godus Wars on to Steam early access, both of which haven’t seen any updates in five years, and released a mobile title known as The Trail, which reportedly had some serious microtransaction issues on mobile, though the Steam version is apparently devoid of those problems according to user reviews; considering earning money in Legacy is hinging on the game actually releasing and players buying the game, this all might strike a bit fishy.
