The last time I had anything to say about Ashes of Creation was back in 2019 (as noted, it was an MMO that didn’t interest me; thus I never really followed it). But I did learn about the sudden closure of Intrepid Studios after seeing this article on Game Informer.
As much as my previous (two) OpEd’s did not have a high opinion of company founder/CEO/game director Steven Sharif (I qualified the reasons for why in those two posts), I never did write that Ashes of Creation itself would never launch in some playable fashion (unlike other crowdsourced and even privately funded projects that end up getting rug pulled).
Why? Because this was a dream project by someone (Sharif) who had the personal funds to see it through (helped along by a successful Kickstarter) so long as the business side was managed properly. I simply didn’t feel the game (from its development gameplay) showed anything that remotely interested me early on (since part of it still felt like an MLM marketer doing the entire sales pitch).
I learned (from these articles) that it did hit Steam early access in December 2025 albeit to mixed reviews (no surprise that it was lacking in the area of the story and content). What didn’t help was not starting off with a solid foundation (requiring that refactoring mentioned back in that 2019 post I wrote).
But this is only the game part where I am giving Sharif a pass. I am not saying that maybe the business side went astray (I did note in that 2019 post about the capital expenditure on a new building to house the staff that was being hired at the time); IMHO, even I felt that it was way too much people (where you have diminishing returns on the development side compared to the salary/benefits expenditure).
Sharif himself noted in followups (after stepping down as CEO and game director) that he’ll be providing more information in a public filing (due to ongoing legal and corporate governance matters). Intrepid Studios is also being hit with labor violation lawsuits by former employees (who were all let go without the required notice period and any pay). The truth will come out in due time (via discovery unless any of this ends up being settled out of court).
IMHO, part of this does come across as Sharif biting off more than he could chew on the business side which requires different skill sets as CEO and as a game director (someone successful in the early pyramid stage of an MLM has ways of convincing themselves they can parlay that success into managing an actual business). As a former ArcheAge whale and typical gamer who believed he could do better, he did (to his credit) put some of his money where his mouth was.
I mean many of us as gamers have been highly critical of how these publishers and game developers operate in the gaming industry which has long been driven by “suits” that do not care about good game design, and mainly care about monetizing everything. Very few however are going to actual fund a studio/try to even develop an MMO (because any well adjusted person would rationally know that isn’t easy).
He willingly put up the base money (at least $30 million of his own money) to start up a studio and hire the initial designers (which included a few industry veterans) but definitely would’ve had to burn through significantly more of his personal net worth to actually deliver the lofty goals set early on. Thus despite early prognostications about how the game would be mostly self-funded, anyone familiar with how resource intensive MMORPG development is (personnel expertise and money), knew that the project would need cash infusion somewhere (whether it be public or private investors).
Repeating (what I wrote the prior two times), the criticism I had was more about gamers falling for the same hype over and over again (funding Kickstarters that end up over promising, and under delivering… or not delivering anything at all) and how someone like Sharif had to learn on the fly the ins/outs of not only creating a full fledged MMORPG, but also running an actual game design studio while wearing the game director cap. The end result is not what he expected (but not surprising to many of us who do at least understand the dynamics of the business).
But that is my current guess. I think in time, we’ll learn if it was decisions that occurred in the years from 2019 to the present which ended up contributing to the implosion of the studio/game. It does leave a further stain on Sharif’s reputation though when taken together with his past MLM history and also being a toxic whale in ArcheAge (a whale who helped contribute to how gaming executives have chosen to monetize titles with their predatory practices).
There’s a bunch of things I’ve quickly read on the Ashes of Creation subreddit which I have no idea is true or not (like him allegedly transferring his house to his wife in November 2025 to protect it from creditors); I believe the facts will come out in due time about a lot of that. I guess no one also knows what the folks who now have control of the company/its assets plan to do with it; another thing we will find out in due time.
