Ashes of Creation Shuts Down After the Collapse of Intrepid Studios
Ashes of Creation appears cancelled as Intrepid Studios collapses after its early access launch, triggering layoffs, unpaid wages, and a studio shutdown.
Ashes of Creation has had a very interesting weekend, to put it lightly. Barely two months from its early access launch, the game is now seemingly cancelled, mainly due to the immediate and utter collapse of Interpid Studios.
Ashes of Creation Cancelled as Interpid Studio Closes
Where to even start with the fiasco that is Ashes of Creation now. After ten years of development and multiple fundraising campaigns including a Kickstarter, Intrepid Studio could not see the game through as key leadership walked out and the rest of the team laid off. Without final pay.
Ok those who didn’t follow the game, let’s start from the beginning. Ashes of Creation is a MMORPG that was announced in 2016. It gained prominence after a highly successful Kickstarter campaign which earned Interpid Studios a hefty fund in a shrt amount of time. Ten years later, it was released on Steam Early Access to Mixed and Mostly Negative reviews.
Although the reception wasn’t great, it gained a dedicated (some may even say cult-ish) community who stuck through it and defended the game to everyone who were skeptical. Unfortunately, they may have been on the wrong side with this one.
Over the weekend, Intrepid founder and game director Steven Sharif shared a statement in the AoC Discord server explaining the complete collapse of the studio. He shared that he is stepping down, why he is stepping down, the exodus of the senior leadership team, and the eventual mass layoffs which affected the entire team. Essentially speaking, the studio is shutting which also means Ashes of Creation, well, will literally turn into ashes.
Woke up to Ashes of Creation being shut down.
— Pirate Software (@PirateSoftware) February 1, 2026
I can honestly say I'm not very surprised after this current phase on Steam. In January of 2025 the team at Intrepid was doing a good job. There were bugs, performance issues, and moderation problems but they communicated and handled… pic.twitter.com/L5hFWPEIH1
But it’s not just these “ethically” disagreeable directions that was the problem. The company was in financial ruin apparently. An internal communication was shared on social media detailing that WARN Act notices were given to ‘all job titles and all positions’ and that the entire plant will be closing.
To make matters worse, it also mentioned that the payroll expected for February 1 will no longer be happening. Meaning to say all the Kickstarter fund and Steam sales is now gone? The game is still available on Steam at $49.99.
This, of course, has turned the community upside down. Many are speculating that the Steam release was just done so the studio does not have to refund the backers on Kickstarter. There was a clause on the campaign page that if the game doesn’t launch, it will issue full refunds to all backers. No wonder the campaign was successful.
Clearly, the game was in no shape even after 10 years to release even on early access. But it made perfect sense to do so, financially. Another “weird” part of the whole incident is the “Board” Sharif was referring to. Because the situation was so abrupt and devastating, of course netizens were out to investigate. Turns out, Intrepid Studio’s Board of Directors is just Steven, and John Moore, who he’s married to, as the CFO. Weird, right?
It truly is unfortunate news and sadly, since it did launch, backers will never see their money back. But even more sad are the people who were just fired and won’t even get their last pay. They were clearly in the midst of something, still working, as their last Steam update was to share that their next dev update was going to be on Feb 13th. Now we’ll never know what those Q1 plans are.
This sounds like a lawsuit but in the end, lawsuits can be filed. Winning it is a different story.
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Sending some gaming news your way from a surfing paradise island. Loves creating content, and researching informative facts and useless trivia. A novice in the gaming industry but a veteran in communications and publication.
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