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.
I like how his reaction to a “crisis of conscience” is to continue to lie to the person, fraudulently take home all this super valuable technology, and then somehow use this bit of immoral bullshit to actually make something decent. It’s like a microcosm of his whole character/career.
I like how his reaction to failure at game dev was to pivot to beans.
He is like a reformed jack and the Beanstalk, except this time he was immoral
But importantly, not what was asked for/promised.
Faked it till he kinda made it
Fake it til you bake it (beans, that is)
Waiting for the movie.