Yogventuer Kickstarter Fails, but Backers Compensated

Sometime a kickstarter fails.  Usually it’s because they don’t raise enough money to get things going, but it can fail for other reasons too: sometimes the whole thing is just a sham, sometimes it can be shut down for legal reasons, and sometimes, as was the case in this scenario, you underestimated the amount of work and money it takes to finish a project.

Winterkewl Games, who started a kickstarter for their sandbox choose-your-own-adventure game Yogventures recently announced that, unfortunately, they cannot finish the game, even though they raised well over half of the $250,000 they were asking during their kickstarter campaign.

Winterkewl attributes the failure to overambition and a small team of 6 people being unable to keep up with demands, saying;

“The failure of Yogventures is a matter of deep regret for the Yogscast, we put a lot of faith in the developer Winterkewl, including allowing them to use our likenesses and brand. However the project was too vast in scope to be realised and despite a huge amount of hard work from Winterkewl they have had to abandon it.”

Sometimes, that would be the end of the story—there’s no refund policy over kickstarter and Winterkewl is certainly under no obligation to compensate their backers.  And that makes the fact that they’ve chosen to do so even more admirable.

“Everyone concerned will get a copy of TUG.”  Says Winterkewl in their statement, “Nerd Kingdom's game is still in alpha but is shaping up to be everything we wanted Yogventures to be. In addition, we have organised for Nerd Kingdom to have the source code, assets and designs of Yogventures to ensure we're making best use of Winterkewl's work.”

“For those rewards that were specifically based on in-game items we're working with Nerd Kingdom to try and match them as closely as possible and will communicate that directly to the people concerned and take any feedback on board.”

Additionally, If you want a refund, they said to contact them directly at yogventures@yogscast.com

Is this a perfect solution?  No, far from it: a lot of people donated really large chunks of money and a copy of TUG probably isn’t getting their money’s worth. But it’s something, and it’s more than many failed kickstarters do, so a big shout out to Nerd kingdom and Winterkewl for being good guys even in failure.