Nine years after securing $3.2 million on Kickstarter and mere weeks after launching into Steam Early Access, MMORPG Ashes Of Creation is in humongous difficulties. The game’s entire leadership team have allegedly quit “in protest” at decisions made by the board of Intrepid Studios, with creative director Steven Sharif accusing board members of “directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out”. Other staff have announced that they’ve been laid off, with one calling it the end of the studio.

Kickstarted back in 2017, Ashes Of Creation finally launched in Steam early access on 11th December. It’s an ambitious concoction – a game in which players will collectively organise to “build cities” and “forge empires” amongst other realm-rewriting feats – but the early access launch version has attracted a mixed user reviewer response.

Intrepid sought to reassure the nay-sayers in a blog post on 29th January, listing a few problems such as cheating and performance issues, but a few players noted that this “director’s letter” was attributed to the AOC team rather than Sharif. In hindsight, some of the language in the post strikes me as rather ominous. For example:

Game development, especially at this scale, is rarely linear. Systems evolve. Assumptions are challenged. Foundations must sometimes be reworked, so what comes next can stand strong. That process can be uncomfortable, particularly in an open development environment where you see the seams as they’re stitched. But it is also what allows us to build something ambitious, durable, and worthy of your investment.

Then, on Saturday January 31st, director of communications Margaret Krohn abruptly declared on LinkedIn that her time at Intrepid had “officially ended”, while claiming that other developers had lost their jobs. Asked whether Ashes Of Creation had been cancelled, she replied: “I don’t work there anymore, so I can’t answer that for you. Personally, I don’t know how they would make it when the heart and soul of the product, the amazing dev team, was all laid off.”

As reported by PCGamesN, senior environment artist Adam Anthony, QA engineer Keith McAvoy, senior character artist Jessica Jennings, and animator Brad Constantine have all announced on LinkedIn that they’ve been laid off. Anthony has referred to these events as “the closing of Intrepid Studios”.

Sharif has also given some comment on Discord, via Eurogamer. “I can make a limited statement in my personal capacity and not on behalf of the company, regarding the situation,” he wrote in the wake of Krohn’s post. “Control of the company shifted away from me, and the Board began directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out.

“As a result, I chose to resign in protest rather than lend my name or authority to decisions I could not ethically support. Following my resignation, much of the senior leadership resigned. Following those departures, the Board made the decision to issue [Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification] Act notices and proceed with a mass layoff.

“I cannot responsibly speak to further details at this time due to ongoing legal and governance matters. What I can say is that the developers and staff acted in good faith and deserved better than the uncertainty that they are now facing. I am incredibly dismayed at the situation.”

We’ll reach out to Intrepid to ask whether Intrepid has, indeed, been closed. Best of luck to all the devs now looking for new work. Ashes Of Creation is still available on Steam, as of writing – there’s a ‘development update livestream’ planned for Friday 13th February, but something tells me they’ll change the schedule.