22Cans still doesn’t have a God of Gods plan in place for Godus

Five months on from the revelations that shook Godus to its core, 22Cans has admitted that there is still no plan in place for competition winner Bryan Henderson to become the game’s ‘God of Gods’.

"No, there isn’t, being completely frank," new 22Cans CEO Simon Phillips told Eurogamer when asked if a timeframe was in place for Henderson to assume his promised role.

"I’d be a bit of a c**t to say look, we’re going to do this on this day and you’re going to get this much money, because we don’t know when that’s going to happen and we don’t know how much money it’s going to be."

The problem? The God of Gods can’t be put in place until the game has multiplayer. And the multiplayer can’t be introduced until the combat has been finalised. And the schedule for all of that is, at best, highly uncertain.

"That could be f***ing years of development," Phillips said of when these features might be introduced. "Actually, I’d rather just keep talking to Bryan and say, ‘Let’s do something based around this. How cool is that?’ Or, ‘Let’s try and do something based around this.’"

That’s not the only complication, either. Henderson was supposed to be in line to receive a small percentage of the money made by the game throughout his time as God of Gods. But he’ll receive nothing while that mode isn’t in the game, and 22Cans isn’t contractually obliged to ever add in the mode.

"There’s no physical pot of cash that’s been put aside for Bryan, because the feature doesn’t exist," Phillips admitted. "There’s nothing to calculate it on. You can’t say, let’s put a pound a day away for Bryan, or ten pounds. There’s no financial concept of what this God of Gods thing is, and that’s what we need to sort out.

"That’s not to say there isn’t an idea of what maybe it should be. But I categorically don’t want to just buy Bryan off. I don’t want to go, we’re really sorry, here you go, and we really mean it. No actually, let’s try do the right thing. It’s so difficult to try and convey I just want to do the right thing."

In February former 22Cans boss Peter Molyneux admitted to making some horrendous mistakes” with the game and its crowdfunding campaign, chief of which was the situation concerning Henderson.

He was the winner of Molyneux’s experimental Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube? Game, his prize for which was the chance to play God in Godus. However, over two years down the line not only is Henderson yet to assume that role, but he was also largely ignored by the studio for long periods in the interim.