Intrepid Studios has apparently shut down, leaving MMORPG fans wondering if they will get their refund after supporting Ashes of Creation.
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Over the weekend, sharp-eyed gamers noticed that many Intrepid Studios employees had changed their LinkedIn status to “Open For Work.” A telling post from Director of Communications and Marketing Margaret Krohn on January 31st said the “chapter was coming to a close.” After emotionally thanking the Ashes of Creation community, she said she doesn’t “have the words” and this “wasn’t what [she] expected.”
This was followed by a Discord message from Intrepid Studios’ CEO and founder Steven Sharif that essentially solidified the studio’s closing. He said that “control of the company” had shifted away from him and the board was making decisions he “could not ethically agree” with.
“As a result, I chose to resign in protest rather than lend my name or authority to decisions I could not ethically support,” Sharif wrote to fans. “Following my resignation, much of the senior leadership team resigned.”
This led the board to make mass layoffs. Sharif didn’t want to go into further detail since there are ongoing legal matters between him and the board. However, he told the let-down players that he was “incredibly dismayed” by how it all went down.
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On February 2nd, the studio will send a WARN Act to all employees, letting them go and shutting down operations. Meanwhile, payroll scheduled for February 1st was allegedly unable to be processed due to the company’s financial constraints.
In late 2025, Ballard Spahr of Sara Systems LLC issued an $850,000 lawsuit against Intrepid Studios. The cloud provider is alleging that Intrepid Studios has nearly $1 million in unpaid fees. As speculations began that Ashes of Creation was a possible near-debt scam that jumped onto Discord in a last-ditch effort to make more money from gamers, Sharif claimed that contract disputes are “common” in business. He said that the matter will likely be dissolved.
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In the original Kickstarter campaign from 2016 to 2017, Sharif promised to refund all backers in full if the game didn’t launch. While this was not a legally binding statement, many gamers are wondering whether Sharif rushed to release the game on Steam to get around the previous statement. Now that the game has made it to Steam, albeit unfinished, Sharif wouldn’t feel morally obligated to give back the millions his studio made from it.
On social media, Ashes of Creation backers are still demanding a refund. A lot of gamers spent thousands on the game, between the $500 package and in-game cosmetics. While others are calling these backers “suckers” for supporting a game that seemed so blatantly suspicious, it still hasn’t taken the heat off Sharif.
At this point, it doesn’t seem likely that Ashes of Creation supporters will get any of their money back. It’s perfectly legal for a Kickstarter project to shut down even after raising money, although if there is proven misconduct, a refund could be possible. However, this level of grift – going on 10 years – seems pretty tricky to navigate and legally prove.
[I’ve not quoted the entire article, just the parts I found most pertinent]
[My own comment:]
… yup.
That’s all, folks!
Game over.
Seems worth noting that… as best I can tell, there is no board of directors.
The whole point of AoC’s funding model… was to avoid having a board to answer to.
… ???
UPDATE:
Ok, I’m watching Kira’s video on this now as well.
Apparently,… there is a board.
He’s being sparse with details, to not get into legal trouble, to not overstep, but he’s saying he’s gotten a good deal of info leaked to him…
“You’re going to find out there was a board.”
He’s focusing on how badly all the employees have been fucked, how there seems to have been some kind of corporate coup, that the game is now owned by a private equity group, that the original dev team has essentially all been fired without warning, development has been outsourced to some overseas team, and that we should wait for more facts.
Oh shit, this game always looked like a scam. Everyone I knew who supported it was a MAGA-esque retard.
Took me a second to recognize it. I thought this was that other game that’s essentially used to benchmark computers with a bunch of particles flying across the screen.
Meanwhile, Star Citizen recently upped the player limit of their servers to like 600 or so. Kinda funny watching internet predictions of the past come true or not.
Josh Strife Hayes recently did a video of basically ‘why do we keep getting indie MMOs that promise the moon and then basically rugpull everyone?’, and I also saw like an hour long video from another creator, a longtime WoW player, who more or less argued that WoW Classic objectively sucks and I can prove it.
To try and paraphrase/synthesize their points, there are basically a few reasons why MMOs so often seem to be full of chuds:
The MMORPG crowd is basically the same group of people that it has been for the last 25 years. There aren’t really too mant new, younger players … joining into an older school MMO style game, they play Fortnite or ARC Raiders or whatever Live Service Hero shooter.
This is an older crowd that really really likes very very simple and repetetive gameplay. You just have to understand a bit of an optimization strategy, but after that, actual gameplay is incredibly monotonous compared to many other kinds of games.
That is to say: the grind is the point. The very very simple gameplay loops are the point.
Also, what this crowd is doing is fundamentally trying to establish or join a social group where they get to feel important by virtue of usually just senoirity in terms of time spent, given that the actual skill ceiling is pretty low, the gameplay is essentially sophmoric.
They’re chasing a dream, an actual alternate reality, where they will be cool and awesome.
So… yeah, simple repetetive gameplay appeals to simpletons.
Fantasy worlds where you are important and respected for basically just being there… appeal to economically and socially disaffected people.
Simpletons who are economic and social outcasts.
… otherwise known as someone highly likely to find fascism to be an appealing ideology, and/or be easily brainwashed into supporting it.
These are the idiot suckers who can’t think very well and don’t think they should have to, the prime suckers who will constantly get got by so many kinds of scams and grifters that ultimately, sell them a sense of superiority and respect.