Eric Tereshinski, the lead developer on upcoming indie game Ant Simulator, has announced the cancellation of the project after the team spent the “overwhelming majority” of their crowdfunding money on “liquor, restaurants, bars and even strippers”.
ETeeski, the company founded by Eric and responsible for the development of Ant Simulator alongside a tutorial package for Unity named Ultimate GameDev Tutorials: Make Your First Video Game! consisted of Eric, the sole developer, Tyler Monce, the Director of Finance and Devon Staley, the Director of Operations. Tyler and Devon are the two who allegedly blew all their funding, Eric has revealed in a tell-all YouTube video.
Ant Simulator was progressing slowly but surely, with a limited beta available in November 2015 for $30. The idea was that you controlled an entire colony of ants, from their perspective. Survival was key, with the official website stating the three main features were to care for your brood, explore for resources, and build an underground army. ETeeski were aiming to launch on PC, Mac, Linux and PS4, however that doesn’t seem like a possibility anymore.
In the aforementioned video, Eric explains that he made some big mistakes in trusting his colleagues who were also his friends of 11 years. He resigned as soon as he found out what they had done, but Tyler and Devon have supposedly covered themselves legally so there isn’t much he can do except cut ties. Eric also said he will try to get refunds to people who backed the Kickstarter campaign, however it can’t be guaranteed and will likely take a while.
As Eric has said in the YouTube comments section under the ETeeskiTutorials alias, “Cutting ties with them is just faster, simpler, and safer. Besides, I’m really damn good at making games. I will make other games. They won’t.” That’s the spirit, but next time don’t enlist the help of people who believe a three-man indie company needs a Director of Finance and a Director of Operations!