Yogcast take half a mil from gamers - run with money

It seems that the Yogs mob ruined this guys life, his wife even filed for divorce!

http://forums.yogscast.com/showthread.php?135485-current-status-of-yogventures

Hi everyone,

I can't make any official statements about Yogventures or what is going to happen in the future, but I may be able to shed a little light on what happened to myself and Winterkewl Games.

For all official information please contact The Yogscast at

yogventures@yogscast.com

The Yogscast have been given full ownership of all things Yogventures including all work that's been done up to this point, code, art, project files etc.

For now, I will dispel what I can of the rumor mill though some details are unfortunately going to have to wait for official word from The Yogscast themselves.

So, no one in my family died. I didn't die. My company Winterkewl Games will unfortunately, probably need to go out of business and possibly file for bankruptcy if things get much worse though.

Working on Yogventures was an amazing experience and everyone at Winterkewl Games really wanted to achieve the very lofty goals the game set out to do, but lack of experience in planning and managing a project of this scope proved too much for our little team. As you know we had a total of 6 people working on the project, Winterkewl Games was started to make Yogventures and while every member of the team worked tirelessly to make that a reality, in the end there was simply too much work to do on our own. After the Yogscast have made an official announcement regarding their future plans for the game we will put out a detailed spreadsheet showing where all the funds from the Kickstarter were spent as well as the amounts that I personally invested once those funds ran out.

We always knew that we were going to need to partially fund development ourselves so the lost money is not in any way regretable, however without pre-orders to help offset those costs, eventually, after I had invested innumerable hours and over $25,000.00 of my own money in the game, we had to admit that without more funding we couldn't afford to keep the game going on our own.

I can't speak for the Yogscast and I make no claims that I do, for their own reasons they decided the game wasn't up to the quality they needed it to be to make videos supporting our pre-order business model. That was and is their prerogative and we had no way of influencing that decision other than making the game as best we could with what we had to work with. As I said, we missed milestone after milestone and continued to come up short of the quality expectations and thus the Yogscast didn't want to advertise the pre-orders until it did meet those expectations.

I tried to cut all costs and continue the development even after the heavy losses of 2013 but the stress of trying to work full time and be full time on the game ultimately caused me to ruin my relationship with my wife, and she filed for divorce because I was so obsessed with finishing this game that she couldn't take not seeing me anymore. When the divorce began I suffered a bit of a crisis personally and had to take a medical leave of absence from work. I almost lost my job too.

I'm deeply sorry that despite our best efforts we never reached a level of play-ability that inspired enough confidence from not only the community but even the Yogscast themselves. This is my fault, I agreed to every feature request we got because I didn't want to lose the opportunity. I wanted so badly to make this project a reality I ignored the real-world risks to the point that I almost lost everything and worst of all I let you all down.

I wish more than anything I would have had this fore-knowledge before we ever began this project. If we would have limited the scope and made a solid plan for working more closely with the Yogscast I have every faith this project would have been a real stand-out achievement in the Indie Game world. However, if you promise the world and don't take into account the amount of time and resources you really need to make good on those promises you find yourself in a position where you can't move forward without more funds but you can't generate more funds without moving forward. That's what happened and I had to make the call that it's for the good of the project that we at Winterkewl step aside and allow the game to be taken over by a larger team. That's why we have turned everything over to the Yogscast. With their resources and connections in the gaming world, I still believe this game could be really great.

As I say though, I no longer speak either for the Yogscast or Yogventures, you'll need to contact them and wait for them to be able to sort out what their own plan going forward will be. They trusted us to be able to handle this development and we let them down just as much as we let you down. That fault is totally my own. I honestly believed everything would go to plan, and to be honest, almost nothing actually did.

I'm very sorry to have disappointed, working for you the backers was the most rewarding thing I've ever attempted, and it's also the only project I've ever attempted that we were un-able to finish. I sincerely hope that the project will live on and that Yogventures will one day be a reality as the Yogscast and this great community have a real opportunity that could be something really great.

Thank you all very much for the support, community, and resources to have attempted such a great project. I'm deeply sorry to have let you all down.

This is just one of the few (or many depending on how you look at it) Backer Projects that just went wrong.

There are plenty of Backer Projects that get it right like Shovel Knight and Divinity Original Sin, but like what they all say, It only takes one bad Apple to ruin the bunch.

Um I'm not sure that idiom applies here. Not like it ruins the excellent games that are already out, nor is it going to stop people from using crowdfunding.

It will make people more weary of it or at least it should do. The Yogs mob are rolling in it and now they've hung this poor chap out to dry, destroying his relationship with his wife, bankrupted his company. They have effectively washed their hands of this project and are doing very little to actually try to smooth things over with the community. All they are offering is access to another Early Access game on Steam that they jumped into bed with.

Jesus, that's just depressing to read.

Man that guy has it bad. I hope things get better for him.

People gave 60 grand to someone for making himself a potato salad, you really think everyone is suddenly going to be cautious about funding kickstarter projects?

Yet That dude might actually deliver unlike Yogcast.

It a kickstarter for supporting the dev... failure is further things you should be accounting about.. instead its an expected reaction to get negativity and so stop with accepting high risk failure... rate and defending when some comments negatively...

I love how they feel they have no responsibility

"Hey, the developer stopped working on this game. We don't owe you anything, but at least we are kind enough to give you another game"

Gee, thanks...

Kickstarting something seems like pre-ordering but with way more risk and with knowing way less about the game or if it'll be anything good.

So it's not something I would see myself do.

Even the ones from well known developers can turn out complete crap

Look at Godus

"the grand return of God games"

LMAO, it's a boring clickfest made for smartphones

Everyone who uses Kickstarter knows the risks. I personally have only donated to a handful of games, not only because I like them, but because they're being made by experienced developers. Shroud of the Avatar, Star Citizen, and Pillar of Eternity are all being made by names that I trust.

The problem is that it's not and people just don't seem to get it. You're not investing, you're not preordering. You're donating. It;s like mecenate.

What about Greelight?

IDK, I don't agree with getting investment from us, because we can't trust these guys. When they get proper investments, those companies will kick their ass if they try to screw them over, we can't do anything but enjoy feeling hustled.

And I think 'early access' takes the piss. It's paying full price and doing the testing on the product as well. They should pay us for that or offer us the game half price or something for doing that.

Green light, I'm not too sure. I don't know too much about it tbh.

What did anyone expect them to do with a half million? Star Citizen raised $35 million and they are still dragging ass.

Alas, I forgot about the stupidlty the human race possess.

@airshocker: In this case, it is fraudulent activity that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No, it's not. It's a failed project.