TIL Peter Molyneux failed his first game so badly he started a baked bean export company, which got confused with a software firm and kickstarted his development career - eviltoast

After his first game venture failed, Peter Molyneux started a baked bean export business. Commodore International mistakenly offered him ten free Amiga systems because they confused the baked bean company’s name “Taurus” with a software company “Torus”, and he used the hardware to create a database system for the Amiga, which was successful.

Which is just such a weird story.

Full text of the paragraph:

Due to the game’s failure, Molyneux retreated from game design, and started Taurus Impex Limited—a company that exported baked beans to the Middle East—with his business partner Les Edgar.[5][6] Commodore International mistook it for Torus, a more established company that produced networking software, and offered to provide Molyneux with ten[5] free Amiga systems to help in porting “his” networking software.[2][7] Molyneux later said “it suddenly dawned on me that this guy didn’t know who we were. I suddenly had this crisis of conscience. I thought, ‘If this guy finds out, there go my free computers down the drain.’ So I just shook his hand and ran out of that office.”[2] Taurus designed a database system for the Amiga called Acquisition – The Ultimate Database for The Amiga[5] and, after clearing up the misunderstanding with Commodore, released the program to moderate success.

  • Owljfien@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I feel lucky that I played fable games as a kid and never heard of this dude so I just saw the games for what they were, no inkling of any broken promises to taint what were actually good games

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Project Natal/Milo was the grift that impreseed me the most…

      Like the big brass balls needed to lie about having made Sentient AI