A promising fantasy MMO spent nearly a decade in development, launched just weeks ago, and now it already looks like it could vanish. Ashes of Creation has slid into an unexpected crisis, and the community is demanding answers. Its future has been thrown into doubt almost overnight, with signs of turbulence inside the studio as well.
If there’s one game that can match Star Citizen for ambition and a long, complicated development story, it’s Ashes of Creation, often described as the fantasy take on Star Citizen. The fantasy MMO released on December 11, 2025, and while it didn’t dominate the headlines, its most striking promise was a dynamic world that keeps changing and meaningfully reacting to players. That’s why the team spent close to ten years building it before launching in Early Access, but so far the plan hasn’t paid off.
What’s going on with Ashes of Creation?
If anyone assumed Early Access on Steam would be the ultimate lifeline for Ashes of Creation, reality has moved in the opposite direction. Just 52 days after the Steam launch, Intrepid Studios’ MMORPG is facing an internal crisis serious enough that some are already talking about a project at risk of disappearing. As reported by WCCFTech, multiple key figures at the studio have marked themselves as “open for work” on LinkedIn, fueling doubts about what comes next.
The situation reportedly unraveled when Steven Sharif, CEO and creative director at Intrepid Studios, posted a message in the game’s official Discord saying he no longer had control of the company, that the board was forcing decisions he couldn’t support “for ethical reasons”, and that he was resigning in protest. The founder also claimed that after he stepped down, several members of the creative team resigned as well, and that the board then warned of mass layoffs on the horizon.
It’s also worth noting that Ashes of Creation launched on Steam as an alpha priced at €50. That move was controversial because the game still needs substantial updates, but Sharif defended the approach by arguing they needed feedback from a large player base. As a result, the MMO currently sits on mixed reviews with roughly 51% positive, while SteamDB shows it peaking at nearly 32,000 concurrent players. For now, the outlook for this fantasy MMO remains uncertain.
Source: 3djuegos
