Peter Molyneux uses the 'land sales' from his failed blockchain project to fund his new project

After years of wandering in the wilderness, Peter Molyneux, a once-famous game designer has finally achieved his goal. He hasn't created a new game that harkens back to the glory days. This is even more important: He has figured out a way to make NFTs worth something.

I'm kidding, but not completely. Molyneux has had a rough decade, where he made a lot of ambitious (some would say grandiose!) promises that were never met. The latest in a long line of bad ideas is Legacy, a blockchain business sim that "allows real ownership and rewards."

It's a standard pitch for NFT, and the result was predictable: Legacy tanked almost instantly after its launch in 2023. It's still playable, and the last update was less than a week ago. But I think that this exchange from the Legacy Subreddit - one of only two threads posted in 2024 - sums up the situation quite well:

Legacy had raised a huge pile of money through pre-sales for virtual plots of real-money land. At the time, reports said, Legacy had raised more than $54,000,000. You may be wondering what happened to that sweet green. It's reportedly used to pay for the development of Molyneux’s next project, Masters of Albion.

Molyneux told Eurogamer that the reported $54 million for Legacy was "exaggerated," but he did not reveal what the real number was.

Molyneux stated, "But it gave us the money to finance Masters of Albion." "We used the majority of our money to bring back Russell, Mark, and Ian [Molyneux’s former Bullfrog, Lionhead, and Iain Wright colleagues Russell Shaw, Mark Healy and Iain Wright]. It's expensive to do that. "You've got them removed from their jobs."

Let's face it: NFTs were never much more than a source of hype, heartache and financial losses. They even led to the odd lawsuit. It's impressive that Molyneux has been able to make them useful, right? It's true that it feels a bit sketchy at first, but unlike a rug pull, or to go even further, a failed crowdfunding campaign, Molyneux and his 22 Cans studio actually developed and released Legacy as promised. It just, well, sucked.

"People played it but unfortunately, at the time, without the meteoric growth of cryptocurrency that fueled the real play to earn gaming... Molyneux stated that he believes play-to earn gaming has flattened and declined. "Legacy can still be played on the Gala Games site, but I don't think the economic model works, and I'm not someone who understands it deeply, but doesn't work in terms of gameplay or finances," Molyneux said.

Legacy worked financially for Molyneux, and 22 Cans. If this ultimately results in a real, no nonsense Peter Molyneux return--which despite all appearances, might actually be possible in Masters of Albion --then I guess NFTs can be useful after all, at the very least for specific use cases. I wouldn't waste any money on them though.