Amazingly, Molyneux’s Curiosity Gets An Update To Add Blocks. Yes, Add.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=b72HoQSQmEk

Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity now has the ability to add cubelets to the main cube. In a frankly amazing update, the social experiment will now happily take your money in exchange for mass block addition, wiping out the hard-earned tapping of no-doubt furious ‘players’.

Except, well, you can also pay to remove blocks.

This, according to one source, is designed to create what Molyneux calls a “war of attrition” between those adding blocks and those taking them away. Prices for both adding and removal start at 69p (for 10,000 blocks) and go up to £7.49 (for half a million).

“We don’t know quite what will happen,” says new text in the app update. “Curiosity may very well rapidly degrade to reveal its innermost secret or maybe the effects of automatically removing cubelets will be neutralised by players keen to keep Curiosity going.”

In any case, it’s likely to make even more money.

The addition and removal of cubelets bought via the new in-app purchases are actually tallied together and applied to the next layer of the cube (so you won’t see cubelets magically appearing under your taps) meaning that potentially the layers on the cube could actually get bigger than the previous ones.

260 layers have already been removed since the experiment started nearly six months ago.

26 Comments

  1. If this is a war of attrition, 22Cans is the only arms dealer.
    Seems like they’re taking the exploitative nature of their “experiment” too far, this is too much.

    • Agreed. This is utterly shameless exploitation.

      What a tool of a guy.

    • I can see the dev meeting now:
      “So Peter, what shall we sell as our next amazing in app purchase in Curiosity?”
      “Spite.”

  2. This thing needs to die and quickly

  3. They should really get this cube nonsense finished with before it does more harm to their reputation.

  4. Can someone work out how much it would take to restore the Cube back to day one if its £7.49 per half a million?

    That would make me chuckle, every coiuple of months restore it back to Day one status so no one ever gets to the find what’s inside.

    • It doesn’t really do that, I don’t think. The add/remove just sums onto the next cube layer.

      • but in theory they could add the same number of cubelets back in that have already been removed in the previous 200 odd layers.

        and they don’t have to tell anybody how many people bought what do they?
        they could just add them anyway to make it last longer, if it even has a finite number of layers anyway.

  5. I thought great of Molyneux after Populous:The Beginning and Black & White, but each news (in recent years) makes him more ridiculous.

  6. I can see it getting abandoned very quickly as it has just became pointless. You get through a layer, only to find out that 5 layers have been added back on. Also, this is still going? :O

  7. does anybody still use this app?
    even CVG stopped reporting on it months ago.

    personally, i don’t think this thing will ever end, they’re just going to keep it going forever as long as people keep using, there will never be final cube, it’s digital so they can just keep going.

    it’ll just slowly die off and nobody will ever uncover the “life changing” whatever it is in the centre.

    they can claim it has a definite end but people keep adding too many cubelets so that’s why it’s taking so long.

    maybe the plan was once to have something in there, but they knew it would never live up to even a fraction of what Molyneux hyped it as, so they’ve decided to make it an endless thing.

    though i’m more inclined to believe the plan was always for it to never end, and they’re just seeing how long they can string people along with the ever moving goalposts.

    though IAPs take this from a harmless experiment to something of a con, at least if my theory that this is designed never to end is right.
    because then, they’re selling something they have no intention of ever delivering.

    in fact, i think this government investigation of IAPs should take a good look at this app.

    • This. The experiment could be to see how long they can keep people removing cubes with the promise of a shiny secret to spur them on. Paying to add more cubes seems like a money grab though.

  8. Does anyone know what was inside yet? I’m so bored of this whole thing.

  9. Inside is a mini Molyneux with a shopping till and a kinect in a carrier bag.

  10. Utter. Bilge.

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