Game developer Eric Tereshinski announced this weekend that he plans to cancel his game Ant Simulator, saying in a video message that his former business partners spent all of their company’s money on “liquor, restaurants, bars and even strippers”.
Tereshinski says anyone who paid for the beta or pre-ordered Ant Simulator will be contacted soon with information about getting a refund.
Ant Simulator, which was originally developed by Tereshinski as part of a 48-hour game jam but evolved into a bigger project once it became popular, looked like a promising strategy game for anyone who is into mandibles. Tereshinski and crew had been regularly releasing video footage from the game, which resembled a first-person version of the old game SimAnt. Now, it’s no more.
In a video published on Saturday, Tereshinski claimed that his former partners, Tyler Monce and Devon Staley, had embezzled their company’s money. Neither Monce nor Staley returned a request for comment today.
Tereshinski said:
I recently found out that my ex-business partners were secretly stealing company money. They had secretly spent the overwhelming majority of both our Kickstarter money and the Ant Simulator investment money on liquor, restaurants, bars and even strippers. This, among many other reasons, is the reason why it has become exceedingly clear to me that I cannot have my career associated with these guys. My ex-business partners directly said to me, ‘If you release Ant Simulator without us, I will sue you.’ I really don’t have any options.
A year and a half ago, I signed an LLC agreement with them. I trusted them. And they had been my friends for 11 years. I made the mistake of trusting them. So that means that resigning and therefore cancelling the development of Ant Simulator, since I was the programmer of Ant Simulator. Resigning and cancelling Ant Simulator is really the only option available to me right now. So this is obviously a huge and disappointing setback, but I am going to continue forward and continue to develop games.
Comments
9 responses to “Indie Dev Cancels Game, Says Co-Workers Stole Money For Booze And Strippers ”
Priceless and really through the experiences I’ve had using Kickstarter et al, par for the bloody course — not delivering the goods because of incompetence!
Have you ever compared your experiences against reality?
I appreciate your edgy Solipsistic irony…
Pretty standard kickstarter then
It’s a shame that people like this poison the well, because there have been some outstanding successes on Kickstarter. I don’t have the funds to spend on games that don’t exist yet, but I’ve had some great times with Kickstarted projects once they were fulfilled.
Poor bastard, really feel for him… surely on these accusations however he has a solid case to have them removed from the LLC and sue them for embezzling money? they obviously showed no remorse screwing him over, if i were him id be getting legal advice with a clear conscience.
He’s not pulling his punches is he?
So if they embezzled then he has legal recourse…unless ofcourse, the stupid internal expenditure accounting of the company allowed for ‘meals, drinks entertainment’ in which case they can now sue him.
If neither party takes action – I’d start to consider the project a con-job.
Seems reasonable, need to keep up motivation to code sometimes.
What a bunch of antholes!
That’s really sad I really wanted to see Ant Simulator made really nice and released