Yogventures Artist Paid $35k For Two Weeks "Work"

[veloper]

snip

He honoured a badly, badly written contract. Immorality is not the same as illegality. The blame here is with the organisers, but people love to get annoyed about the smaller issues. If I backed it. I would be mega pissed at the legal team and money people. The artist leaving the game with his paycheck is a drop in the bucket in this cluster fuck. You are talking about "honour" & "loyalty". Talk to a C.E.O. or a manager about that over a drink and they will laugh in your face. I think we just have to agree to disagree on this one buddy.

A smart CEO is big on honor and loyalty...in his employees. No manager can police a team all the time. Unmotivated or disgruntled employees can and will underperform in many less obvious ways. You need commitment.
You also need the legal bits, but that's not enough by itself.

The explanations given reek of disinterest and lack of motivation. An unnamed "friend" (still a friend?) walks away with 35K and the company does nothing.
A mere 35K out of whopping 500K for a modest 250K goal Kickstarter is lost and the plug gets pulled on the entire project?
It's like nobody gave a damn.

Or maybe the artist is just a small part of the overall issue. I think it's very bad what has happened to all of the investor's/ KS public's money. But The buck starts and ends with the organisers. If you are suggesting the money was embezzled.

I'm not suggesting embezzlement by Winterkewl, but the project just appears to me as Brindley's (Yogscast) baby and not Winterkewl's by the sound of things. The unnamed Winterkewl artist certainly wasn't invested in the project, but the whole enterprise falls apart too quickly.
Another Kickstarter devteam, like Double Fine or HBS, would bent themselves double to save their project, like trying to acquire more funds, or releasing the game in 2 episodes, etc. just to be able to keep going.

I see parallels with that Amalur MMO project: rich guy outside of the industry has this big idea for a game of his own; hires an outside developer to make it for him; results in failure.

I think a promising Kickstarter project needs to be run by a close knit team in which the full members already have the all the critical skills and also a personal interest in the success of the project.

 

[Riotguards]

Also, I agree with you Riotguards, I think I might leave with the money too. But that doesn't make us good people, and if we did do that then we shouldn't be surprised that our reputations turned to shit afterward. We'd deserve it. Of course then again, if I was in Winterkewl's position, said artist may have probably already found all his personal information quietly left out where identity thieves could find it by "accident".

its kind of complicated how the legal system works in america, the problem with contracts that are fulfilled is that (from what i know) is that if you outright tarnish someone's reputation you are actually libel to being sued, i've seen it a few times where someone has sued someone because their negative review or whatnot has damaged their reputation thus leading to a loss of sales (which they'd have to folk out even more money)

also i'm not sure how it'd appear to an employer but personally if i saw that you had taken advantage of a very weak contract i'd see you as a potential candidate, simply being that you were smart enough and driven for the money that you would take any steps in order to maximize your own profits, that alone could mean you'd do a lot of work for a bonus or whatnot

edit

found someone asking a somewhat similar question

http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-i-get-sued-for-tarnishing-someone-s--good-name-561799.html

with releasing someone's name you can't exactly control what is said about that person so i'd see it as a double edge sword

 

[CaitSeith]

It turns out that two random bandwagon youtubers are not great at running a company to create a bizarre vanity project game about themselves.

They should had hired a third-party company to make the game like the AVGN did.

 

[CaitSeith]

Because then that artist could take them to the cleaners for defamation of character, or whatever the legal terminology should be.

Legally, the artist has done nothing wrong. Hell, he may not have realised he was going to get offered the LucasArts contract till after he signed up at which point as soon as he accepted the Lucas contract he then had to legally stop working on the Yogventures.

At this point, hes don nothing wrong. Sure, if he was a good guy he'd return at least a percentage of the money but he doesnt have to. If he were to return the money, it'd then be sitting with the Yog guys, then becomes a case of what do they do with the cash...

Yeah but legally not done anything wrong and not done anything wrong are not the same thing.
He took money for work he didn't do.
That is doing something wrong.

Welcome to the unfair real life.

 

[CaitSeith]

It turns out that two random bandwagon youtubers are not great at running a company to create a bizarre vanity project game about themselves.

They should had hired a third-party company to make the game like the AVGN did.

They did. They hired a company called Winterkewl games. And it was Winterkewl that 'hired' this artist.

Ok. My mistake. I meant a third-party company with traceable records. In other words, what else has Winterkewl Games created? At least FreakZone Games had released a game before. I couldn't found anything about Winterkewl before Yogventures.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Update: The Yogscast have sent an email to backers explaining their side of the story:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Yogscast/comments/2bm4as/email_sent_to_kickstarter_backers/