Ashes of Creation is based on the ashes of a dream that will never become reality. The perfect moment for every long-time critic to say: “I told you so, it’s a scam!” Our MMORPG expert Karsten Scholz analyzes this accusation that has been circulating on the internet for years.
What are the current discussions based on? On the sudden end of Ashes of Creation. The long-time dream of a revolutionary sandbox MMORPG has come to an end. The man behind the dream, Steven Sharif, is gone. Along with him many senior developers. The remaining team? Fired. The game? Still online in Early Access Alpha, but no longer available for purchase.
Not all questions behind this sudden implosion have been clarified yet. However, the already available reports, research findings, and statements provide a first glimpse:
- On December 11, 2025, the Alpha of Ashes of Creation landed as Early Access on Steam. The announcement came with surprisingly little lead time. A large part of the community criticized the Steam launch due to the unfinished state of the MMORPG.
- In the same month, a lawsuit started circulating, claiming that a cloud service provider was demanding $850,000 in damages from Intrepid. The reason: unpaid invoices. The studio head downplayed this lawsuit at the time, noting that it would roughly correspond to the studio’s weekly operating costs.
- In January 2026, there were layoffs at Intrepid. Steven Sharif stated that 9 people were affected and that these were just normal fluctuations. The development of the MMORPG was not affected.
- A document from January 16, 2026, proves that Steven Sharif lost his position on the legally responsible board of Intrepid on that date. Until then, it was always communicated externally that the studio head had sole leadership and was not accountable to anyone.
- The new investor board is said to have demanded comprehensive layoffs and a relocation of the studio to a cheaper country during a meeting at the end of January. Steven Sharif responded on January 29 with his resignation. Many senior developers followed. Afterward, the remaining employees were informed of their termination by the new ‘bosses’.
- When exactly Steven Sharif involved external investors in the development of Ashes of Creation is unclear. However, due to the extremely high monthly costs of the studio, it seems that investors gained significant influence in the fourth quarter of 2025 – which likely led to the unplanned Early Access launch on Steam and the demands for significant cost reductions.
My colleagues at GameStar have summarized the sequence of events and all known information in video form on YouTube – it’s worth watching:
Skepticism from the Start
First of all, let’s clarify that Ashes of Creation has been struggling with scam accusations for many years. One reason for this: the “multilevel marketing” past of Steven Sharif. Such pyramid or Ponzi schemes (more about it on Wikipedia) have a bad reputation, are often illegal, and are built on the backs of people lower in the hierarchy.
Another reason: the long development time and slow progress. Ashes of Creation was announced in 2016, with a release originally scheduled for 2019. Since the project is currently in the last alpha phase, a beta was only realistic this year. A final release would probably not have occurred until 2027 or later.
According to the outside perspective, the long development was largely financed through crowdfunding campaigns and supporter packages – similar to Star Citizen. However, the way the expensive alpha packages were temporarily to be monetized drew criticism again and again.
It is understandable that some critics are now going around the internet with “I told you so, it’s a scam!” after the sudden end of Ashes of Creation. Even more so, because Steven Sharif suddenly left the sinking ship, there are suddenly hints of an investor board that was never supposed to exist, and because Sharif is said to have sold his house to his husband. The latter protects the property because potential creditors can no longer access the house.
This simple devaluation of Ashes of Creation as a scam does not do justice to the complexity of the case. This is also shown by the discussion in the current GameStar Talk on YouTube with MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski, MMORPG YouTuber Entenburg, GameStar author André Baumgartner, and moderator Lea Herfurtner. Be sure to check it out!
A Scam? Maybe!
How does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz assess the situation? For me, Ashes of Creation is still not a planned scam from the start, aiming to take money from genre fans and make studio head Steven Sharif rich.
In such a scam, the mastermind behind it would never invest around $30 million of his own wealth into the project or build a studio with hundreds of employees burning just over $3 million per month.
A game that I clearly consider a scam is The Day Before. A small team that relied on the free help of many naive fans who were supposed to take care of things like community management and quality assurance. Testing phases and gameplay presentations were repeatedly postponed. Foreign assets were reportedly used for trailers. There was a legal dispute over the name. Very little love and effort went into the released product.
A scam like this would not involve bringing the community on board so early and allowing them direct involvement in progress and issues over many years. Or that the responsible developers regularly report from development and show gameplay. None of this makes sense if one intends to eventually trick the followers.
By the way, I also do not consider the sudden Steam release as a type of exit scam designed to bring in cash so that Steven Sharif can escape as a made man before everything explodes. The payout system from Steam simply does not allow that. To this date, Intrepid has not received any money from Valve for the December sales of Ashes of Creation.
As a result, Steam buyers actually have a good chance of a full refund, even if they have already spent many hours in Ashes of Creation. At least various players on Reddit report that their refund request was successfully processed – as discussed in this discussion.
However, I believe that Steven Sharif made two crucial mistakes that build on each other:
- He had the dream of a sandbox MMORPG with a hardcore PvP focus for the hardcore niche, which at the same time consumed the AAA budget of a blockbuster mainstream project. Therefore, I was very concerned in December 2025: Is Ashes of Creation too expensive for its own niche?
- Due to the high costs, at some point he apparently involved external investors and then did not communicate this with the community.
To clarify these and other still open questions, we have contacted a media lawyer. As soon as we have the answers, we will inform you on MeinMMO.
From the second mistake, one can actually speak of deception from my point of view. After all, the promised independence of the project was an important reason for many genre enthusiasts to financially support Ashes of Creation. At this moment, Sharif betrayed his community and set in motion a stone that buried Intrepid a few days ago.
In the end, there are no winners in this situation. The dreams of many players have been shattered. The beleaguered genre of MMORPGs has lost another hope from the West. High financial investments have gone to waste – equally from the community, from Steven Sharif, and from external investors. The developers have poured their heart and soul into the project over the years for nothing, now have to look for new jobs, and some are still waiting for unpaid salaries.
All of this is just bitter.
The case of Ashes of Creation reiterates why hardly anyone dares to tackle the MMORPG genre. It is extremely expensive and time-consuming to implement such a complex and extensive project. The risk of failure is high. Genre veteran Jack Emmert told us upon his return to Cryptic how it can still work: “A new MMO is coming from me” – the failed game about Warhammer brings genre veteran Jack Emmert back to Cryptic
