The cancellation of Ant Simulator is one of the most disheartening stories about crowdfunding indie games I've heard. It's also one of the most outrageous and crazy, filled with betrayal and greed and tragedy.
Lead programmer Eric Tereshinski, along with two business partners, raised money on Kickstarter to create a series of game development tutorials. As an added plus, they also raised money separately for the development of a survival game, Ant Simulator.
Fast forward a couple years and we get the below video from Tereshinski, in which he resigns from the LLC he set up with his ex-business partners---ETeeski LLC---and cancels the game. The reason?
His ex-partners spent the majority of the money raised on "liquor, restaurants, bars, and even strippers."
The Kickstarter campaign only raised a little over $4,000. You can go high on the hog with four grand, but not for very long. It's unclear just how much was raised separately for Ant Simulator outside of Kickstarter. If I can find out I will update the post.
Worse still, Tereshinski can't finish the game on his own without exposing himself to a lawsuit from his ex-partners, and he has to take down all the videos made for the Kickstarter. Suing them would be difficult and costly, especially given how small the crowdfunding sum was.
"A year and a half ago, I signed an LLC agreement with them," Tereshinski says of his once-partners. "I trusted them and they had been my friends for 11 years. That means that resigning, and therefore cancelling the development of Ant Simulator, is really the only option available to me right now.
"They went over the contract line by line with me and I reviewed the whole thing twice," Tereshinski comments in response to calls for a lawsuit. "I just didn't realize they had protected themselves, screwed me (like the fact that they listed themselves as consultants, so they aren't legally obligated to work on anything, but still have the rights to spend money etc.), and I had no idea what their plan was until it was too late."
For his part, Tereshinski will be sending out emails to offer refunds to backers who, I can only imagine, will be more than sympathetic to his plight.
According to the company's website, Tereshinski's partners were Tyler Monce (Director of Finance) and Devon Staley (Director of Operations.) I've reached out to the email listed at the company's website as a contact email and will try to get further comment from all involved, though at this point it's hard to say who is in control of the various company accounts on social media and so forth. I'll report back with anything I can find out.
Here's Tereshinski's video:
That's a hard listen, and pretty infuriating. There may indeed be two sides to this story, but certainly as it stands this looks like a pretty huge abuse of Kickstarter backers and Tereshinski's trust, time, and money.
Correction: The original version of this post mistakenly stated that all funds were raised on Kickstarter. That turns out not to be the case, as the developers raised other money for the game itself through preorders.
