Yogscast, the personalities behind hit YouTube MineCraft videos, issued a statement just this week stating the demise of “Yogventures”.

The YouTube duo, Yogscast announced this week that the Kickstarter funded Yogventures will now cease its development due to the abandonment of its developer, Winterkewl. Yogventures was conceptualized as a 3D Sandbox game based on the hit MineCraft, with MineCraft itself being the inspiration of the game knowing how Yogscast became popular through their MineCraft videos. Yogscast co-Founder Lewis Brindley stated that the project is too ambitious and difficult for the 6-man developing team working on the project and has stated that Winterkewl’s abandonment on the project is a “good thing”.

In relation to the said demise, another issue looms with the downfall of Yogventures and this is the supposed refund of its backers who pre-ordered the game and is said to be entitled to various freebies. As a response, the Yogscast crew is giving out Steam Keys to the game, TUG, an open world survival game by Nerd Kingdom. Not everyone reacted positively to this back-up plan however as some are still requesting for them to be refunded properly.

The Yogscast crew will then have this to say:

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.

The game as it stands it is not capable of being released and certainly wouldn’t live up to the expectations of the people that backed the Kickstarter or pre-ordered the game.

However we don’t intend to leave it there as we know that the Yogventures backers and buyers are our most dedicated fans so we are intent on finding them some awesome stuff and cool experiences in its place.

Last week we announced that everyone concerned will get a copy of TUG. 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 the Yogventures Kickstarter backers the physical rewards should already have been received and we’re happy for people to contact us at yogventures@yogscast.com if any are missing so we can look into it for them.

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.

We also hope to be able to announce other games and fun stuff for the backers and buyers of Yogventures over the summer. Watch this space.

In addition, Winterkewl’s lead developer Kris Vale, states that the development studio will most likely go out of business as a result of this failure.

It’s a totally sad day for Yogscast fans but on a positive note this should be an eye-opener to aspiring game developers and Kicksarter backers to evaluate thoroughly on their concepts and projects before venturing out to actual development.