Someone finally figured out a good use for NFTs: Peter Molyneux is using 'land' sales from his failed blockchain game to fund the development of his new project
I didn't follow everything he's been doing but I don't understand the negative sentiment. Populous and Black & White were fantastic games IMO. But these games are old so maybe this view of him as a liar is more recent development.
Also many decades ago now. He went on to make massive promises for the Fable series - and while I enjoyed them, they absolutely did not meet what he had described. Hence his reputation these days of over promising and under delivering
He definitely got worse over time. It's sad, really. Despite always exaggerating and overpromising he still used to reliably put out good, fun games. I remember Bullfrog used to be a venerable company, the first Fable was a solid game (despite not being what he promised it would be) and Dungeon Keeper was a classic. And yeah, Black & White were great.
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, the other game that ruined his reputation for me is Godus. He funded it with a kickstarter with the promise it would be a successor to the God-Sim genre like Populous. It turned out to have all of the dark patterns of mobile games (time-gating with micro-transactions), but in a PC game.
One of his first gigs was when a software company mistakenly contacted his business to make a program of sorts, and rather than explaining the situation, he was like "Who? Oh yeah, sure, we are definitely that company you were looking for, we totally know the thing you're talking about, we'll do it!".
He was a liar from the very start, it just took some time, and a handful of overhyped (by him) games for people to catch on. If I had to point to an specific event for the decline in his public image, it'd be the Project Milo presentation for the Kinect (just revealed as Project Natal).