Gala and Molyneux's 22cans sold $54M of Legacy NFTs; the game was abandoned within weeks

Ars Technica reported in April 2026 that players who poured roughly $54M of cryptocurrency (list price) into Peter Molyneux's Legacy, published by Gala Games and built by 22cans, still feel misled. Legacy was first announced in 2019 as a single-player business simulation. After a call from Gala's Mike McCarthy, Molyneux said every mechanic suited the blockchain, and in December 2021 he pitched a 'play to earn' version at Gala's Galaverse conference.

Gala sold the first 4,661 NFT land plots within days, at the peak of a speculative bubble around its Town Star game. The $54M figure includes some cheaper plots given to Galaverse attendees, and many buyers were recycling earlier crypto gains. Players told Ars that the Legacy they got in 2023 was a pale shadow of what was promised, with a broken-by-design economic system, and that they abandoned the game en masse within a couple of weeks of launch.

Former Gala executive Jason 'Bitbender' Brink said 'Legacy was paid for upfront' because Gala paid 22cans a minimum guarantee funded by the NFT sales, so the game's later fate was 'somewhat financially irrelevant to the companies involved', in Ars's words. Molyneux said in a 2024 interview that the money funded his next game, Masters of Albion. Ars did not report how much each company received.

Players who spoke to Ars say they lost thousands of dollars each; the game was effectively dead within weeks of launch, per Ars Technica.

Gala sold land plots promising crypto earnings before Legacy had been built.

Sales came at a peak speculative bubble fed by the Town Star play-to-earn run, and prices later fell 90%-plus in that game's token.

The NFT revenue covered a minimum guarantee to the developer, so the studio was paid whether or not players stayed.

Players say the economy, the core of the 'earn' promise, was broken by design, and they left within weeks.

Pre-selling a game's economy as a way to earn means the builders are paid before the product proves itself, and buyers carry the failure.

In April 2026 players were being asked to pay $25 for early access to Molyneux's Masters of Albion, which he says will be his last game. Former Gala executives and players told Ars that Gala games tended to ship a minimum viable product and then move on to hyping the next project.