Eteeski lost over a year of work and much more due to legal problems.

He made no mention of pizza. No wonder they weren't a successful business.

 

You don't need proof to sue, proof helps with winning the lawsuit though. Having the lawsuit at all is bad enough, even if you win. I wouldn't want to have to go through that stress and financial burden.

100% agree! I probably wouldn't do it myself either.

Some of my friends I've known for as long as I can think back and of all of my close friends I can't think of anyone who strikes me as irresponsible with money. But all those are either freelancers where handling money responsibly sort of is a job requirement, or have a university education that often even includes financial aspects.

I agree 100% that he should just stayed sole proprietor. But theoreticaly speaking, if there had been a good reason to form a legal entity (which probably there wasn't), would the risk have been lower with picking anyone else than people who he knew for 11 years? To me that sounds like the safest option. I wouldn't know where else to look for trustworthy people. Sure, the right answer would be not forming a legal entity at all... but that mistake has been made.

 

Who knows, but if he knew them for 11 years he should have known their behavior might lead to this. Or like my pappy used to say.. never trust your bank account with a guy who likes to put money in the butt-crack of strippers... or gamble... or.. well you get the idea.

The other part I am curious about is over how long of a period of time did this go on, and did he not even keep an eye on the account balance? This didn´t sound like a one-time thing where they blew the 5k on strippers all in one night.

 

Maybe he could have had a bank account with his name on it, and only his name on it. Sounds like he was the only coder in the bunch, maybe the only one making the game actually. He could have hired an accountant too, just when he needed him/her and could have had paperwork signed that did not allow personal use of the money. Then he would be the one suing.

As I said before....had he asked for donations for his videos while he was releasing them...and had I known my son was using them, I would have gladly donated.

But now? Due to mismanagement on the part of his partners, and lack of paperwork to protect the Kickstarter Backers, he is the one abandoning his users, not the other way around. Giving him money isn't going to get the Ant Simulator back on track.

As for his legal fees, I am sorry if this sounds cold, but he is simply not a good manager. Why should we bail him out for that? If he had cancer, yeah, not his fault. If he lost a child, not his fault. If he were being sued by a AAA gaming company who thought his game was too similar to theirs...then maybe we might feel compelled to help him.

But...hiring your friends as your "finance" and "operations" manager, doing all the work, and then giving them access to other people's money? Sorry..no.

$4000 is not that much money, thankfully...not 11k like some have lost. He can create new games..his fingers still work. He can recover, like every other entrepreneur who has lost money due to bad business decisions.

If I am going to donate money, it will be to people who really need help, those who live in deplorable conditions, who don't have access to the internet, girls who are not allowed to go to school, people who have been devastated by natural disaster.

Not to game developers who can rise up and help themselves.

To be fair, this guy has not asked for help at all. He is simply explaining what happened to his users/Backers. I rather wonder if those asking for help on his behalf are not actually smearing his reputation even further.

Give the guy a chance to grieve and move on. Like every other person caught up in stuff like this, I feel a huge amount of sympathy. But my biggest take away from this, is to stay away from Kickstarter unless you have a proper business structure put in place and the protections for the Backer's money that you need.

 

Here is a recent comment that Eteeski made under the video linked in the OP. I thought you guys might be interested:

 

@Martin_H: Basically they wrote up the contract, they "explained" the contract to him, and he signed it without getting advice from a neutral third party. They may very well have intended to screw him over from the very beginning.

 

He should just move on. You can easily waste a year chasing the lost year. It's called learning from your mistakes.

 

I think that forming the legal entity was the right option. So that's not a mistake.

AFAIK, the point of legal entity is that equipment and funds belong to the entity. When people do the business themselves, they would put their non-business property at risk, if anything goes wrong.

 

That sucks. Id kick in a few bucks if he wants to start a kickstarter to sue the S*** out of his partners.

 

I would kick in a few bucks if he wants donations to resume his tutorials, even if they are different tutorials and different games. I won't kick in for legal fees though.

He is right, he didn't seek out professional legal help when going over the contract and they screwed him. He probably would spend a lot of money on legal fees and get no where.

 

It's probably just an inevitable outcome given all of the folks seeking their fame and fortune in game dev. A lot of these people seem to treat it very unprofessionally and honestly are just not prepared to be doing it in the first place.

There are actual rules and regulations and reporting requirements (here in the USA anyway). All I am saying is certainly don't let it prevent you from chasing your dream. But make sure you have the business sense and experience to go along with your gamedev skills. A lot of Indies would probably benefit from studying business and marketing. Prepare yourself for a real business venture. I guess that is my "take away" from this.

 

OK @zombiegorilla you beat me to it, this was what I was thinking - but more along the lines of PR/Marketing.
Could 'services' really be a business expense write off, for something like a conference or expo. I guess it depends upon the time allotment.

It's a bum deal but I think he needs to learn from his mistakes and pull himself back up, without asking the internet for more funding.
Seems like there is a lot of people who think it's actually legitimate practice - attempting to secure funding and be supported by other people. At least he has offered helpful instruction for his part.

 

If the case is that he is not trustworthy to have money, that he abandoned his users, or that his project cannot continue even if he receives funds- then of course no one should donate anything.

I did not read into this, but I can safely assume neither did most people responding.

But I trust Teila when she says we shouldn't donate, and so I find no offense in anyone scoffing at that idea. If knowledge with the guy's circumstance was lacking, then I may take back some of what I stated. However, from what I read, the initial impressions of people's responses just seemed a bit too uncomfortably cold / merciless. My impressions could be wrong though.

This stuff happens, and the worst thing out of it (assuming he is at fault for what happened to him) is that for many people, Ant Simulator won't release. If we could do something to help it release, as the OP implied, I think we should not be so quick to sound so callous & cold. If he is a victim of his circumstances (and perhaps some naivety or the crime of being young) then I think that same applies. Not that people should or shouldn't donate, but that we shouldn't be so quick to make judgements. If it's something reasonable like, "I think a donation would be a waste. He needs to get it together first. I just don't trust him." that is reasonable & perfectly fine. Just don't say it in a way which implies there's ice in your veins.

 

I don't think anyone is cold and callous. I think maybe today, on a couple of threads, you have a been a bit too quick to judge.

Poor guy is in a bind but he seems to have accepted the responsibility and is rising above it. I doubt very much he wants our pity. I am sure he wants to just put this behind him and move forward.

Good for him.

 

By the way, he stated that he has to delete the tutorial videos he made for this kickstarter (as it's part of the LLC property I suppose). They're still available now on his youtube account so for anyone interested, I would strongly suggest to download them ASAP.

 

Haven't heard of this guy before, but after watching the video, it looks sketchy... Like the guy ran out of money to continue development (due to poor management and blowing money on strippers), so he decides to blame his unnamed "friends" for stealing the money, while he rides out of this mess on a white horse with his reputation unstained and with sympathy from the community.

 

Basically yes, but it is mainly about your risk of being sued. If you have an office or a store or a physical location for the business you need to incorporate because all it takes is someone slipping on ice and you can end up losing your house. If you have employees you need to incorporate just because of the risk of some type of employee lawsuit.

But if you are some guy working from home from your computer, your chances of being sued are minimal, and if you are renting your house or living with your parents, there is not much they can take anyway. The risk he took by taking on partners, and the costs associated with maintaining an Inc raw surpass and danger he was in. Of course the real benefit now is that he has legal protection if anyone wants to sue him for a fraudulent kickstarter irony.

 

First of all, you're all mean! lol
Second of all, I might be too soft from what I've read here.

Eteeski helped me a lot when starting out. I used to follow some of his series of tutorials, along with others. So it really sucks he got screwed over.
He's not stupid, for heaven's sake he understands quaternions! lol But sadly he trusted the wrong people and got screwed over by assholes pretending to be his friends.

From what I read here I thought hes asking for donations but I didn't catch that in the vid, except the lack of his face showing clearly that hes not in the mood but still feels like he needs to notify his fans and subscribers.

Some of you are saying its not cool that he had a KS for tutorials. But as far as I know it was just one series after years, where he wanted to dedicate more to it and do it properly. I don't know his life situation, his other incomes and expenses, so I'm not gonna judge that KS.

Kickstarter might not be the way to go, but he and other tutorial makers should definitely have a Patreon account if they want to allow their subscribers and fans to support them.

 

Understands how they work? Or understands how to use them?

 

Nothing wrong with that. I would have donated for the tutorials had I known they existed. I like it when people build things to help others.

But..I thought the kickstarter was for a game. If not, why in the world did he need those other guys? lol

Friendships are wonderful...until money gets in the way.

 

He probably had kickstarter for the videos, the company for the game, and actually made the videos at the company as if he was an employee there. Afaik in the US it's common (or even backed by laws if no contract covers this?) that work made on company time belongs to the company.
Our German laws are a lot different, so this is all strange to me and I don't know for sure.

 

Understanding quaternions doesn't help with business/people skills. And vice versa. There's different kind of intelligence, being good at one of them doesn't necessarily help with the others.

 

@ChrisSch Nothing wrong at all with you personally supporting him and donating money (if he actually wants that?).

As for myself (and I'd guess at least a few others here), I have never heard of the guy before. No clue who it is. So to me it is just another random person trying to strike gold in game dev and ended up in a mess. He wasn't the first. He won't be the last. It's not that I wish bad on him in any way. Like I said I have no clue who he is or what he does or anything other than people mentioning he made some videos.

 

His friends responded: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...ers-respond-devs-claims-100-percent-bull.aspx

 

And here is a perfect example why you shouldn't get excited and go on a crusade every time you hear or see something on the Internet. People can and will say anything. Obviously, someone is lying here. I'd guess none of us know who. And really why waste time on such nonsense anyway. Just a bunch of drama. I prefer action, science fiction or even horror movies.

 

Interesting. I'm not sure I believe either side, which is reasonable because the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. I'm betting there was poor management all the way around. However, there were a couple of things I noticed about their reply:

#1 - They're not willing to share any of the LLC documentation, so you have to take it with a grain of salt.
#2 - They call themselves partners, say they helped start the company, but also say "They didn't sign on...", which kind of lends credit to the other guy's claim that they billed themselves as consultants.

 

...

So I'd guess now they'll be flinging dirt at each other for all the eternity.

I think those guys should just solve that in the court. Since both sides refuse to do that, then both sides probably have something to hide.

 

I interpreted that as "we're not a bunch of random guys who signed on later, but founders who were there from the start".

 

Code (csharp):

1.  if (drama) return (!myBusiness)

 

I'm not sure, I'm not very good with either, but I am using them.

I'm not sure what he was doing after that, I stopped watching his tutorials after I started working things out for myself. I just remember the tutorial series having a kickstarters.

I know, I was joking.

 

The sad thing is as time passes and more & more people do things like this it will be more and more difficult for honest legit folks to fund their game-related projects on KS. I wonder how often this happens on Kickstarter for non game industry projects? I certainly wouldn't be surprised if the game dev gold rush has brought more of the "bad" KS campaigns than any of the other areas have. It might be interesting to know what the % is for this type of thing happening in KS in general vs the % for game-related campaigns.

 

I'm kind of surprised how little thee kickstater was to cause all the drama less then 5k

 

Soo... how many strippers would that be?

.....

IIRC that's about somewhere close to monthly salary of one US programmer. Or even less than that. Why did those guys even kickstarter in the first place?

 

No kidding... I didn't read all the details until today. <5k in over year, the reponse says the other two kicked in 5k themselves, and apparently the paid 9 contractors (couldn't have been much). I mean this is like 3 little kids arguing over a lemonade stand. It's not a real business, or rather not serious one. How do they justify meals and drinks as business expenses? The "revenue" isn't even a living wage for one person, let alone 3?!? Any lawsuits are pretty much out of the question, legal fees would surpass any settlement by a long shot. This is bunch of self aggrandizing kids playing at being a business and making a internets drama out of it. Even the game videos are fairly broken prototypes. Much ado about nothing.

 

Well to be fair in some countries (like mine) 5k is enough to live off of for a year, for two people, but he doesn't appear to be from one of those countries. I don't know where hes from but I'll assume USA so that amount isn't much there. So I think all the drama is not over money, but the potential money, rights to the ant simulator, and any videos he made since they joined up.

EDIT: Maybe they tricked him and did everything mentioned, maybe they didn't and he realized they're actually useless to him and he can do it all himself and tried getting rid of them. Can hardly tell that unless you're one of the three people or close friends.

 

With reading all these comments I feel there was some sort of shady way of marketing strategy. (identical to Hatred)

Just look up the "Ant Simulator" and it'll return results like "Dev quits, his partners spent Kickstarter money on food and liquor". Now it's a matter of time before it reaches bigger news channels like BBC or CNN, which would increase their exposure even further.

Etesski was told to remove his Ultimate GameDev Tutorials, but they're still up (as of this writing). Announcement video has ads and he gains loads of viewers, which would earn them even some cash. His business partners didn't comment on that matter either.

As @zombiegorilla said, 5K is too small to take matters to the court and, with solicitors and legal fees, it wouldn't be worth doing.

I am also concerned how Ant Simulator funds were used on food as an "operating cost". I mean, do these guys work full time at Etesski? Because that would be damn impossible, unless they were eating ramen or a very cheap food. What about other costs like renting and electricity? Was it operating cost as well? If it was, they would he broke in few months time, considering the fact that they're likely to live separately. None of this make sense, which leaves me to a conclusion that they had part-time jobs to fulfill those needs.

3 people using $5,000 on food and employing nearly 10 people doesn't sound realistic. It's possible to earn more than 5K in a single year if you have a decent job. Or heck if there are three of you!

I can't conclude who is wrong, Eteeski or his "friends", or they're both onto something, unless we get the full story from everyone.

But all I can say is that Eteeski is unlikely to be a bad guy here. He helped so many people to make their first games (including me)! It couldn't be an evil plan right from the beginning.
Personally, I think he doesn't look like a guy who would take cash and spend them all on liquor and strippers.

But what I know for sure is that both sides are definitely hiding something!

 

Yup. So when I can't figure out who's wrong and whos not, I just say I wish everyone gets what they deserve, from the heart.

 

Or following the @zombiegorilla route and working for someone else. Most succesful indie devs I know spend less then half there time developing games. The rest is focused on business stuff.

 

Yeah, like I said earlier in this thread, this is just three young people with no business experience playing ´grown up´ and spending other people´s money.

 

It can be done but not in USA. Obviousuly, it won't be a very big amount of money even in that case, but it is possible to hire 10 contractors for artwork (meaning 10 one-time project, not a full time artists), spend some cash on food and attempt to blow what's left on strippers and booze.


Either way, Judging by the amount of noise on google the whole story just turned into another media circus. The whole thing kinda looks childish to me, and in the end it might work the same way as that star citizen "scandal". Meaning it was all over the news for a few days, and a week later everyone forgot about it.

 

Indeed. There are many things related to the full cycle of building and selling games that I really don't like. (marketing, business side, music/sound, backend, etc.). Conveniently, there are many people who do like doing just those things.

My transition from indie to staff was very slow. After I got pretty good a making games, the type of games I wanted to build started getting bigger. Well beyond what I could effectively do by myself. So I teamed up with another developer. Next game we added more people. We kept adding folks so we could build bigger projects. At one point I hired my sister to handle all of our business management (billing, accounting, etc). This gave us more time to focus. After small teams, small companies and and larger teams, we got acquired. Each step let me (us) work more specifically on the areas that we loved, and got more resources and more specialized and expansive staff on the business side. I love "making" games, not selling or marketing. I get to do that now with all the resources I need, other highly specialized and world class developers, and the marketing is handled by arguably the best marketing machine on the planet. I loved my time as an indie, because of what it lead to.