Molyneux: 'monetisation is slightly disgusting to talk about'

Peter Molyneux has discussed the love-hate relationship between developers and monetisation in a new interview, calling it a 'disgusting' discussion for studios to have. The developer's indie studio 22 Cans has just this week launched its debut app Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube? - a game which will soon include microtransactions.

Speaking with GI.biz, Molyneux touched on the subject of in-game payments, and stated, "For a developer, monetisation is still slightly disgusting to talk about.

"You're not supposed to do this for money. But, actually, if you all pin us down and put a bright light in our eyes, feed us truth drugs, I bet all of us would be. Well, you need money, let's be honest."

Molyneux's Curiosity app rewards players with coins for tapping away at a giant cube, but soon booster payments will be integrated into its store. Regardless the developer isn't pleased with the way some indies milk players for cash.

“The thing that we're disgusted about, in the indie world, is greed," Molyneux continued. "I've got this big thing about free-to-play at the moment: in a lot of freemium games I've played it's obvious to me that they just want to wring me for everything I've got, in the shortest possible time. That's all.

"They want to squeeze me into ten hours of gameplay, get everything out of me, spit me out and that's it. And that's wrong. In a lot of free-to-play games I've felt dirty about spending money: I feel like I cheated, I feel like I'm impatient, I feel like I'm bored.”

The Curiosity cube has now reached its second layer after launching on Tuesday, and the coin store has yet to allow microtransactions. See the start of layer two here.