Breeding Season got cancelled

Breeding Season, a sex game that billed itself as “Harvest Moon meets Hentai,” was one of the biggest projects funded on Patreon: according to tracking website Pledge Society, the title was raking in a whopping $42.3k a month. But as of yesterday, development on Breeding Season has ceased completely.

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http://kotaku.com/sex-game-cancelled-after-taking-in-five-figures-a-month-1783682938

The reason? Art director left and took all assets with him to make a new game. Yes, he could, because of such contract.
http://breedingseasongame.blogspot....is-over-s-purple-has.html?zx=dec2249677145bb1

According to the Breeding Season devs, Sandler earned a total of $190,000 over the course of the project. Over on Sandler’s personal blog, he says that his new project, Cloud Meadow, was created to “save what I could of the Breeding Season Project, and deliver on the spirit of the promises made by the project.”

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I can't believe it. After Stardew Valley success I though this will be another underdog hit as we don't see games like this on PC everyday.
Seems I was wrong.

This is the reason why I don't back any small team projects anymore. The risk of the project being cancelled or delayed indefinitely because of the loss of one person (for whatever reason, illness, divorce, whatever) is too high.

In this case, it was very bad decisions on part of the dev team management in how they handled the art. While I agree with the theory of giving artists more rights over their work, in this case, I would at least have stipulated a lifetime license to use any art created for the game in the event that artist would leave. But letting the guy retain full ownership of the art, and being able to both leave, and take a chunk of the team's remaining funds with him? Not even remotely sane.

I'd love to back the small teams, but like wolfing said, the risk of failure is to high. Heck, that's why I won't put my own game on KS. I can't honestly tell myself I have the capability to get it to market, even if I got the funding to hire an artist and programmer. I certainly can't make that promise to others in return for money.