Game Developers Blew Kickstarter Money on Booze and Strippers

image from Geek Journal

Guest post by Christophe Blake Parker

Go ahead and picture your average gamer. What do you see? What images first come to mind. A pimple-faced teenager holed up in his room playing World of Warcraft? A businesswoman tapping frantically at her screen while she plays the eighth billion level of CandyCrush? A super-bro with a tank-top, a sideways hat, and a headset who’s yelling obscenities at kids half his age while playing Call of Duty? How about a couple of guys knee-deep in booze and strippers?

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with booze and strippers, but when those things are bought and paid for primarily with Kickstarter money that becomes a major issue. And when it’s done in secret and leaves someone hanging out to dry, well then that’s a god damned tragedy.

Ant Simulator was funded in 2014 through Kickstarter and was off to a promising start. Billed as a unique survival game, Ant Simulator allowed the player to take control of an ant and to manage a colony of other ants. Everything seemed to be going well until lead programmer Eric Tereshinski found out that Tyler Monce (Director of Finance) and Devon Staley (Director of Operations), two of the other developers, and who were also his business partners and long-time friends, had been grossly misusing the company’s funds on restaurants, bars, liquor and bawdy entertainment.

Worse still is that Tyler and Devon basically screwed Eric over by reworking their contract and making themselves contractors so that they are no longer legally responsible for the project and can therefore not be sued. He even talk about how they had gone over the contract “line by line” with him, but that he had assumed everything was hunky dory as before.

Adding insult to injury, Eric is also claiming that he has to take down any videos and materials associated with the developer ETeeski LLC else he be sued.

Here is a video from Eric about the incident:

All’s fair in love and war and video game development.