Game developer Eric Tereshinski announced this weekend that he plans to cancel his game Ant Simulator, saying in a video message that his former business partners spent all of their company’s money on “liquor, restaurants, bars, and even strippers.”
Tereshinski says anyone who paid for the beta or pre-ordered Ant Simulator will be contacted soon with information about getting a refund.
Ant Simulator, which was originally developed by Tereshinski as part of a 48-hour game jam but evolved into a bigger project once it became popular, looked like a promising strategy game for anyone who is into mandibles. Tereshinski and crew had been regularly releasing video footage from the game, which resembled a first-person version of the old game SimAnt. Now, it’s no more.
In a video published on Saturday, Tereshinski claimed that his former partners, Tyler Monce and Devon Staley, had embezzled their company’s money. Neither Monce nor Staley returned a request for comment today.
UPDATE (2/2): Speaking to Game Informer, Monce and Staley denied Tereshinski’s allegations, accusing the developer of cutting them off in November, 2015.
Said Monce: “I don’t know why he’s painting that picture, but the reality is that anything that was spent in a bar or restaurant was very reasonable in nature when you look at any business, including video game companies. It was part of our operating budget, it’s not anything that was excessive. It was all reported to the IRS. The picture he’s painting about that is 100 percent bullshit.”
Tereshinski said:
I recently found out that my ex-business partners were secretly stealing company money. They had secretly spent the overwhelming majority of both our Kickstarter money and the Ant Simulator investment money on liquor, restaurants, bars, and even strippers. This, among many other reasons, is the reason why it has become exceedingly clear to me that I cannot have my career associated with these guys. My ex-business partners directly said to me, ‘If you release Ant Simulator without us, I will sue you.’ I really don’t have any options.
A year and a half ago, I signed an LLC agreement with them. I trusted them. And they had been my friends for 11 years. I made the mistake of trusting them. So that means that resigning and therefore canceling the development of Ant Simulator, since I was the programmer of Ant Simulator, resigning and canceling Ant Simulator is really the only option available to me right now. So this is obviously a huge and disappointing setback, but I am going to continue forward and continue to develop games.
You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.