In late January 2026, Ashes of Creation and its studio Intrepid Studios were hit by a wave of resignations and layoffs that threw the future of the MMORPG into doubt. Founder and director Steven Sharif announced that he was stepping down “in protest”, claiming the Board had pushed for decisions he could not ethically agree with or carry out, without giving any concrete details about what those decisions were. Shortly after, much of the senior leadership reportedly left as well, and developers began updating their LinkedIn profiles to say they had been laid off or that their time at Intrepid had come to an unexpected end.
Sharif insists that the team acted in good faith and deserved better, but he also says he cannot share more because of ongoing legal and governance issues, which leaves the community with a lot of unanswered questions. Players point out that public records list only Sharif and his husband on the Board, so his claim of clashing with “the Board” sounds strange when in practice he appears to have been the main decision maker. That gap between his rhetoric and the actual ownership structure is one of the reasons people suspect something is off rather than just “normal” restructuring.
On Steam and social media, concerns range from confusion over early access purchases to outright fears that the studio is closing and the game is effectively dead. Some ex‑employees openly describe the event as a mass layoff and talk about the “closing of Intrepid Studios”, while official communication remains vague, limited to delayed updates and generic PR statements. The result is a situation where almost everyone agrees the staff were treated poorly, but nobody outside the inner circle really knows whether this is the final chapter for Ashes of Creation or a painful, badly handled reset.
