No, it was on sale.

It is like fishing, and catching fish are different things.

I've been trying out The Universim recently. It has a lot of the same ideas, but gets rid of many which I felt didn't work. Most notably, there is no creature bound to your will. I think the game is better for the omission. Version 1.0 is slated for January, and is supposed to include interplanetary colonization.

I remember all the marketing and promises for Black and White 2 that were never realised. It doesn't feel like they really managed the first sequel, let alone another one.

I remember reading those Dev journals too, but I feel like they helped me to get more out of B&W than most other people.

Yes, it was all about building hype, but it meant that I played more in a "find-your-own-fun-and-set-your-own-goals" way, which I think was what the original intent was.

Everyone's biggest complaint was that the missions were half-baked and felt like they were thrown in right at the end. And they were right.

If your game has been in Alpha since 2015. And there are basically no updates since that time, then yeah you're a scam artist. He knew what he was doing was wrong and he kept doing it for nearly a decade, there's no defense for that.

Also plenty of other software developers manage not to do what he does so it's obviously not actually that hard

Idk…telling lies to potential customers that you know to be bullshit to get money from them based on promises you know you’ll never deliver sure sounds like a scam artist to me:

(From the article)

Molyneux talked in interviews about the pressure to overpromise in order to secure funding, telling Tech Radar that "the behaviour is incredibly destructive, which is 'Christ, we've only got 10 days to go and we've got to make £100,000, for fuck's sake, lets just say anything'."