Automation games are a relatively recent development in gaming. Published in 2015, Infinifactory can be considered the first game of the genre. Just one year later, Factorio entered early access, soon to become the most known and successful automation game to date.
Impressive how little homework they did. Article starts off the very first sentence with a whopper. Factorio was available (and already going viral) way before hitting steam EA, which back then was the Greenlight program and way tougher to get into than today's EA. It predated Infinifactory by over a year. I hope they put more effort into research for the rest of their weird philosophical article, but I wouldn't count on it.