Peter Molyneux distanced himself from mobile gaming last week as he announced his studio’s new PC and console game, Masters of Albion. “After messing around on mobile – what the hell was I doing? – I thought to myself…I need to come home to PC and console,” he said during Opening Night Live.
And yet his studio 22cans has done pretty well out of its two mobile releases, Godus and The Trail. Appmagic estimates that the two games combined have earned over $13.6m to date.
Godus, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary on mobile, has made over $8.5m from 17m downloads, according to Appmagic. The Trail, which was published by Kongregate, made more than $5.1m from nearly 15m downloads. These estimates do not include Apple or Google’s 30% cut, so net player spend will have been nearly a third more.
22cans also appears to have tested many of the crafting and item creation mechanics seen in its new game Masters of Albion within cancelled mobile game Legacy. A preview video for Legacy is below.
Legacy was soft launched on mobile in the Philippines from August 2020 to July 2021. It was reworked as a web3 game in collaboration with Gala Games. 22cans later made a reported $50m selling NFTs linked to the game.
“Design products, produce them in your factory and build a town to nurture your business,” said the game’s product page blurb. “Sell your products to other players, compete against them in events and competitions and join up with friends to work on grand projects.”
“Get hands-on and customise every detail, from the very design of your products to the buildings in your town,” it continued. “Watch your town grow and spoil your citizens with lavish houses, better working hours and trips to the pub or make them toil for extra profit but run the risk of strikes.”
This is not the first time Molyneux has been critical of the mobile games business, despite having been relatively successful in it. Back in March, in a discussion of his time working on mobile free to play games, he told The Fourth Curtain podcast:
“I think the whole free to play genre has become very…I’m gonna say stale. Because I think there is a playbook of how a free to play game is done and people follow the playbook and that playbook is very, very destructive of innovational gameplay.”
“Because the free to play mechanic is you’ve got to ask people for money and there are certain psychological ways of doing that. I found that very, very challenging.”
