Don’t click away. You haven’t actually landed on The Onion. This is a real story. At least, Eric Tereshinski, former lead developer of Ant Simulator, claims this is a true story.

Tereshinski resigned from ETeeski LLC, the developers of the Kickstarter-funded game Ant Simulator, after finding out that two of his business partners took proceeds from the crowdfunding and investments into the game and spent it on “liquor, restaurants, bars and even strippers.”

Tereshinski made the announcement on the ETeeski YouTube account in a short video. He announced that Ant Simulator would be cancelled and that his business partners are preventing him from making the game on his own or as part of another company under penalty of legal action.

In addition to the end of Ant Simulator, a number of YouTube videos that Tereshinski made while part of ETeeski, including videos about Ant Simulator and a game development tutorial series, will have to be removed from YouTube. Tereshinski says that he has retained control of the ETeeski channel otherwise and will continue to post videos to it.

The announcement video is a black screen with a message saying that emails about refunds should be going out shortly. Tereshinski will try to get people refunds but given what he says happened to the money people put into Ant Simulator, it doesn’t sound like the likelihood of full refunds is high.

Well, I can’t say that we’re not used to successful Kickstarter campaigns failing when the rubber hits the road. This might be the most unusual reason for a Kickstarter failure ever. It seems like something out of a comedy. Maybe if Silicon Valley was on HBO but produced by Chuck Lorre. God, that would suck. Okay, that’s all Chuck Lorre shows.

Source: ETeeski