Ashes of Creation Hit with Allegations of Luxury Spending from Project Funds
Thanks to a new video by creator NefasQS last week, Ashes of Creation is being hit with fresh allegations. The Kickstarter-funded MMO ended up collapsing earlier this year, but it has recently taken an ugly turn.
The YouTuber claimed to have “obtained and processed the entire Intrepid Studios general ledger from 2015 to 2026.” The content creator corroborated documents and records in the hope of “helping us finally finish most of what remains of the mystery surrounding Ashes of Creation and the implosion of Intrepid Studios.”
According to the video, Intrepeid Studios founder and former CEO Steven Sharif used money tied to the project on personal luxury spending, including a private chef, auction purchases, cigars, and trading cards. The YouTube creator released a leaked ledger, showing Sharif’s misappropriation of the funds.
But the claims don’t stop there. Another report says the ledger includes payments to Gore Oil Company, according to GameRiv, which NefasQS linked to the deed owner of a mansion purchased by Sharif and his husband, John Moore, which was sold to the couple for $4.9 million.
Sharif responded with a statement over the weekend, denying the claims. According to Kotaku, Sharif says: “NefasQS has been fed false and defamatory information by individuals with an axe to grind, in an effort to litigate this dispute in the public domain alongside our lawsuit already pending in federal court. Rather than verify those claims, he has chosen to repeat them, acting as a mouthpiece to advance a narrative that drives clicks and views, with disregard for basic journalistic standards.”
Ashes of Creation has been in the middle of drama for a while since the studio shut down, with a California WARN notice confirming a permanent closure, affecting 210 employees.
Apparently, the director and leadership team quit just weeks after it launched as a $50 Early Access game. Sharif claims that the senior dev team has quit “in protest,” claiming that its management board had asked him to do things he “could not ethically support.”
While players fought for refunds, Steam eventually removed the game. Afterwards, Sharif and the studio’s board started their messy and very public legal battle. According to IGN, Sharif won the “first leg of his legal battle against Intrepid’s Board of Directors, led by Chair Rob Dawson, and their affiliated entity, TFE Games Holdings LLC, claiming, ‘breaches of fiduciary duty, violations of federal and state trade secret laws, and wrongful efforts to seize company assets, including its valuable IP through an unlawful and manufactured insider foreclosure.’”
While the video is still live at the time of writing, NefasQS has said that someone is already trying to take it down, according to Kotaku, saying, “Someone already filed a privacy complaint against the video, just a heads-up, but we will be disputing it,” he said. “Someone also reported by a Reddit account from our community subreddit to the admins.”
