Within the historical past of videogames, there are few botches extra notorious than that of Godus. Envisioned as a god sport within the fashion of Molyneux’s earlier work on the groundbreaking Populous, it was additionally supposed to be the house of the winner of Curiosity, the sport about smashing away items of a dice to succeed in the mysterious prize inside—a prize that turned out to be godhood in Godus.
This was the place issues began to go flawed. Molyneux shortly started dialing again the size of the promised “life-changing” prize, after which Godus itself turned out to be just about garbola, after which it was all deserted (together with the winner of the Curiosity prize) till 2016, when Molyneux’s 22cans studio resurfaced with Godus Wars, a warfare-focused tackle the thought of the unique. Guess what? Additionally garbola, additionally deserted.
Each video games have lingered on Steam, trapped in a swampy torpor of early entry and long-forgotten unfavourable consumer critiques. However now their struggling is nearly over: 22cans has introduced that each video games are being taken down.
“22cans wish to share essential information relating to our video games, Godus and Godus Wars,” the studio wrote in a message posted on the Steam retailer pages for each video games. “Regrettably, because of an upcoming technical change to Amazon Net Companies, affecting our capacity to serve mandatory sport information to new customers, these titles are to be withdrawn from the Steam retailer. Please be assured that present gamers can proceed to take pleasure in these video games with out interruption.
“We sincerely respect the unimaginable assist from our gamers over the previous decade and lengthen our heartfelt because of you all.”
It is simple to poke enjoyable on the thought of “unimaginable assist” from gamers as a result of for essentially the most half, Godus and Godus Wars simply pissed individuals off and shredded Molyneux’s status, which had been well-earned over the earlier 20 years with an enviable run of video games together with Populous, Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White, and Fable. And it isn’t as if there’s any type of neighborhood round them: Based on Steam Charts, 9 persons are presently enjoying Godus (maybe pushed by curiosity following the announcement—that is double the common concurrent participant depend over the previous 30 days), and there is actually no person enjoying Godus Wars proper now.
Even so, it feels to me like the tip of an period. Godus and Godus Wars might have been awful video games however they had been attention-grabbing bits of historical past from a time when Molyneux’s phrases nonetheless carried some weight—it appears so way back now—and I am only a wee little bit bummed out to see them go. Possibly it is partly as a result of it means we’ll by no means once more get to see a headline like this:
However possibly we’ll. Earlier this 12 months, after inflicting a blockchain-based enterprise sim known as Legacy upon the world, Molyneux teased his subsequent challenge, a brand new sport set on this planet of Albion known as MOAT, which he hopes will “counter the entire notion that all the things I say is a promise that is going to be damaged.” I hope it does.