before hearing about it

while* hearing about it. The only introduction is a bulleted list of what the project is and isn't that Liam copy–pasted from their docs. Nothing about any anticipation; nothing about how long it had been in the works; nothing about the authors; no link to a release blog or previous story discussing it in any way; nothing about finally being in a playable state/anything related to the dev cycle. Liam talked about it like it popped into existence (true) and they were just hearing about it for the first time (true).

Combined with what I said above, it's just basic media literacy that I'm reading about a dead-end throwaway project.

it's deeply cynical

I gave it a shot by reading the article, which was more than it deserved.