Less than 24 hours after releasing their latest game Godus Wars, Peter Molyneux’s studio 22cans is already facing controversy, announcing today that they’ve removed the game’s microtransactions following community backlash.


Godus Wars, a simple real-time strategy game that was both announced and released on Steam Early Access yesterday, was presented as something of a fresh start for Molyneux’s god game. In an attempt to win back fans, Molyneux had spent the past year staying out of the press and quietly working on the combat sections he had promised, which crystalized as this new game. Though Godus Wars is a separate package, 22cans also handed it out as a free update to anyone who had purchased the original Godus.

Yet when people started playing around with the game last night, they found a $5 microtransaction package, which seems unfathomable for a game that’s barely finished. Somehow, the folks at 22cans didn’t anticipate that this might make people angry. And after some backlash, they quickly decided to pull it.


Wrote 22cans CEO Simon Phillips today:

We’ll be making some changes to the game and also the steam page to reflect the feedback that’s coming in and we’ll do a round up of that very soon. In the mean time, its been brought to our attention that the extra content being a premium add on really isn’t a popular choice. Whilst we think that it does represent good value, especially considering that Godus Wars has been delivered as a free update to hundreds of thousands of users and the lower purchase price of the main game we understand previous Godus owners frustrations with this. Therefore, based on your feedback, the extra content will be available to all free-of-charge. Apologies for the frustrations and we hope you enjoy playing.

That sure was a quick turnaround. I wonder what the next controversy will be?

You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.