In an email sent to Yogventures backers that's been posted on Reddit, Yogscast co-founder Lewis Brindley said the $150,000 it received from the Kickstarter went toward physical rewards, marketing and "supporting the project," and added that it's spent a considerable amount of its own money on top of it.
The question of what happened to that money came up earlier this week, when Kris Vale of Winterkewl Games revealed that the amount had been transferred to Yogscast shortly after the Kickstarter wrapped up. No formal contracts were ever signed but Winterkewl had estimated that $50,000 would be required to create and ship physical rewards to backers, and expected that the rest would go toward hiring a programmer for the project, something that didn't actually happen .
But in an email to backers intended to address "misinformation in the media and elsewhere," Brindley wrote that the entire sum went toward promoting the game, and that it did in fact make an effort to hire a programmer.
"We set up a contract with Winterkewl early on to allocate funds between the two parties. Winterkewl would deliver the game and Yogscast would receive a portion of the Kickstarter money. That $150,000 was spent directly fulfilling physical rewards for Kickstarter backers, packing and shipping the rewards, covering marketing expenses - including the booth at E3 2012 - and supporting the project over close to three years. In addition we have spent (and will continue to spend), considerably more than any money we received on rewards for the people that backed this project," Brindley wrote .
"To address a specific point that has been raised about hiring a programmer: we did discuss this with Winterkewl in an effort to help them out, although wasn't part of the agreement and would have been paid for directly by Yogscast," he continued. "Multiple professional programmers were approached to work on Yogventures, however they all declined the position. Furthermore, the hiring of at least one programmer we courted was vetoed by Winterkewl. There were no further funds requested from Winterkewl."
To his credit, Brindley also spoke graciously about Winterkewl, writing, "The truth is that although Winterkewl worked really hard to deliver Yogventures, technical and personal issues meant they weren't able to create the game we'd all envisioned at the start of the project." He also reiterated the promise to support Yogventures backers with Steam keys for TUG and other games and rewards that will be revealed to the community in the near future.
