The End of Project Utasia (for the foreseeable future)

Hello friends, I haven't been around since May or contacted hardly anyone since then. I needed time to think about my options and how I would go about doing them. But I've made my decision and I need to let everyone know it.

Our programmer suddenly decided I wasn't worth her time and said she quit without a significant raise to make me "worth her time." After she asked to come back I said no, because she had shown herself to be rash and untrustworthy. She coded the site in MVC oracle and not everyone uses that language style. I could find another programmer to pick it up but it will likely be more expensive per hour than I had the budget for. With all of the features in Utasia it would have taken around 450 hours to complete, likely more. I could have stripped our concepts down to the bare bones to reduce the work load but I didn't want to stoop this great idea down so low and to remove everything that made it unique and awesome. Also there is the risk of the same thing happening with the next programmer, my trust is quite shaken.
Was I going to sell Utasia to the highest bidder?
This is something that could be an option given the miracle buyer descends from the sky and gives me 3,000$ for it. But it will be unlikely that we find a buyer. We have a lot of art but not a lot of programming, and as I said the language is uncommon and is likely to scare away buyers. I won't actively advertise it's selling status as I feel it would be an embarrassing waste of time. I've seen good sites try to sell for more than 2 years straight as buyer after buyer says "yes" but doesn't return phone calls or emails. I feel like because of what I've already seen that I would be better off counting my losses. Also would the new buyer care as much, would they cannibalize our artwork and concepts? This site has taken 3 years of work out of me and I care quite a bit.
If one day I can again fund development then I will continue. Remember that site will cost A LOT of money to develop and has a lot of risks attached. I know when to quit before I lose everything.
But I have decided to try something else, and possibly if this is successful then it will be able to fund Utasia in a few years time. I've had this idea for a while during development of Utasia and I think it's something that a lot of money can get behind since it breaks the norm of what a traditional pet site is and will be much faster and easier to develop in comparison. It's called Pixapets and we will be running a Kickstarter in December or sooner. I'm doing a Kickstarter for this game because "if people are interested in the project enough to fund it then that's great and worth my time and money! If they don't think it's a good idea and don't then I won't have to waste time and money doing something they'll hate anyways". Utasia has made me a lot more cautious in this regard and I encourage you to support this new endeavor that has the same spirit of individuality that Utasia has.
Thank you so much for everything you've done for us here and sticking with us all this time. I've grown to love all our supporters and I hope to see you again one day. If you need to contact me you can by using the "email" option in my profile here and it will go straight to me. Farewell!