http://kotaku.com/how-a-successful-kickstarter-lost-half-a-million-dollar-1608877998
QuoteYogventures, an ambitious video game project helmed by a group of YouTubers called The Yogscast, raised over $567,000 back in 2012 to make what they called "the game you've always wanted."
Last week, the developers of Yogventures announced that they had cancelled the game, and that backers would not be getting refunds. So what happened? Where did the money go? Let's break it down.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterkewlgames/yogventures
I remember seeing some of early news about who the developer was going to be and I thought they were putting a lot of faith in a group of people with no real experience, let alone something big like an open sandbox. The best they could do now is take the already created assets to another company and get something finished with it, but that would take more money and as the article pointed out they've already been forced into weird profit sharing schemes with developers so financially they are probably unsteady anyway. YouTube changed how they collect revenue this last year, spelling financial doom for a lot of YouTubers, they tried launching videos on their own site and sold advertising space there but you can't really compete with the kind of traffic YouTube will generate.
The other thing that came up in the article was about profit sharing. Do I have a problem with the Yogs sharing profit from a game that they generate hype from? Not really, a lot of times they show off the weaknesses of a game just by messing around with it. Conversely I had a big time problem with the TotalBiscuit channel in the past for doing the exact same thing, but that channel was supposed to be actual game journalism with some form of integrity.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterkewlgames/yogventures/posts
Oh, and speaking of beloved likenesses being placed in the hands of video game devs and risking the wrath of millions of fans...
http://io9.com/fireflys-cast-will-reunite-for-firefly-online-1610617567