That sucks, was kinda hoping to play it on vita.
Devs should really think carefully before promising ports they can't deliver on. I'm sure they're just as irritated by it as we are but still.
I think this a bit of a different case.
He made the game in GameMaker, which has a Vita version and promised a Wii U version.
The Wii U version was never approved by Nintendo, thus that was taken out of his hands.
The Vita option is there, but proved inadequate because they pushed the engine further than it had ever been pushed before, and the Vita version of the engine wasn't performing well.
In the case of the Vita, I suppose the best thing he could've done would've been to make that the target platform. But we'd likely have gotten a much worse and severely limited game in the end.
No harm no foul--he's offering refunds or replacement keys--but I am surprised that they wouldn't just hire a port studio to do this.
Remaking an entire game to be exactly like another game made in another engine is no small feat. And managing a port house is still a lot of work, even if you aren't doing it yourself. Not to mention expensive.
At some point a cost/benefit analysis had to have come into this.
Realistically, there probably weren't that many Vita or Wii U people, and the sales prospects on those systems are minimal now and will be even worse whenever any ports could potentially be completed.