MMORPG Ashes of Creation Suddenly Implodes 52 Days After Steam Early Access Launch
The last 52 days have been rough for Ashes of Creation on Steam Early Access, but the situation now appears to have escalated from difficult reception into an internal crisis that could threaten the project’s near term future. Over the past few hours, players and backers began flagging a wave of staff LinkedIn profile changes to “open for work”, including Director of Communications and Marketing Margaret Krohn, who posted a brief and emotional note indicating an unexpected ending to her time on the project.
Shortly after that, a statement attributed to founder, chief executive officer, and Creative Director Steven Sharif surfaced via the official Discord channel. In that message, Sharif says control of the company shifted away from him, and that the board began directing actions he could not ethically agree with. He claims he resigned in protest rather than lend his name to those decisions, and says much of the senior leadership team resigned afterward. He also states that following those departures, the board decided to issue WARN Act notices and proceed with a mass layoff.
Sharif adds that he cannot responsibly share further details due to ongoing legal and governance matters, but says developers and staff acted in good faith and deserved better than the uncertainty they are now facing. If accurate, this is the kind of governance break that can instantly destabilize a live service MMO, since it typically triggers delays, interrupts content production, and damages player confidence at the exact moment a project needs stability the most.
However, the governance narrative immediately raised questions because commenters began pointing to public records and corporate filings. A Reddit thread highlights that the board listed in California public records includes only Sharif and his husband, John Moore, who is listed as chief financial officer.
That discrepancy is now driving the core uncertainty around what “control shifted away” actually means in practice. It could refer to financial control, investor rights, lender covenants, or governance mechanisms that do not always map cleanly to a simple board list. At the same time, without more documentation or official statements from the company itself, it is not responsible to treat any single version of events as conclusive.
Ashes of Creation’s development history has been long and controversial even before this moment. Originally announced in 2016, the MMORPG raised over 3200000$ on Kickstarter in 2017, and continued selling various forms of pre release access for years. Over that period, some players questioned the project’s funding model and pace, and online discussions occasionally escalated into accusations and scam claims. Those claims remain allegations, and what is verifiable is that development continued with regular updates and a major engine transition from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 in late 2021.
Last month, Intrepid Studios chose to launch on Steam Early Access while the game was still effectively in an alpha state, a decision that immediately triggered debate. Sharif had argued the title needed broader feedback from a wider player base, and that funding was not the blocker. But the Steam launch also locked the project into a harsher public accountability loop where incomplete systems are judged as a product, not as a work in progress.
Reception on Steam reportedly landed at Mixed and has remained fragile. Observers cite a launch peak around 31800 concurrent players and a steady decline afterward, alongside sales estimates in the 220000 to 320000 range. Using those estimates, the gross Steam revenue range would be roughly 11000000$ to 16000000$, with the post platform cut net cited as 7700000$ to 11200000$. These are rough calculations rather than confirmed financial disclosures, but they illustrate the strategic pressure point: Early Access can bring cash and feedback, yet a weak first impression can also cap momentum and raise the cost of regaining trust.
Backers have also resurfaced an old Kickstarter era expectation about refunds if the game did not launch, arguing that an Early Access release might be treated as a technical fulfillment of that promise. Even if that language existed in the campaign messaging, such statements are not automatically legally binding, and any refund obligations would depend on the exact terms, jurisdictional consumer law, and platform policy. The result is a familiar MMO flashpoint: a community reading the project through a lens of sunk cost and uncertainty while the studio enters a period of operational turbulence.
If mass layoffs do proceed, the most immediate risk is a multi month content and stability freeze. MMOs do not only need engineering capacity, they need live operations, community management, customer support, and production continuity to maintain the psychological safety of the player base. Losing leadership and issuing WARN notices during the first stretch of Steam Early Access is a worst case scenario for sentiment, retention, and future monetization.
For the wider genre, this is another reminder that Western MMORPG development remains brutally high risk. Recent years have already been defined by closures and cancellations, and players have grown more skeptical of extended pre release monetization. The “start small and expand” playbook is often cited as the most survivable path, because it reduces the blast radius when plans change. Whether Ashes of Creation can pivot into that kind of controlled recovery depends on what remains of the studio’s structure after the current governance conflict resolves.
Do you think MMO Early Access launches help projects survive by widening feedback and funding, or do they create a trust gap that becomes impossible to close once the first impression goes public?
