"Scam" is the problematic part. The article avoids the word in the title because the article itself says:
> "I think we use the word scam as a colloquial term mostly and there's some nuance to this. I don't think either game's developers have the actual intention to not deliver."
> "I think for me, the base intent matters very little when the end result is the same and you've lied to everyone throughout."
If it's true that the game developers promised this:
> The campaign promises, among other features, "multiplayer with the population density of real cities" and a fully dynamic environment with no fixed interaction points.
Then it's clearly a scam. And both statements really are on the kickstarter. There is also this gem:
> We plan to expand to every internet connected device with a screen very soon!
There is however the possibility they are merely incompetent and genuinely don't appreciate the difficulty implicit in the scope of what they've set out to do.
They did lie, 100%. Cofounder said he, "quit Google, Facebook, and Apple" to start Dreamworld. He fails to mention that both Google and Facebook were 3 month internships, and his role at Apple was an SDET and not an actual software engineer.
> "I think we use the word scam as a colloquial term mostly and there's some nuance to this. I don't think either game's developers have the actual intention to not deliver."
So it's not a scam, not to speak of blatant scam.