The director and creator of Ashes of Creation, the MMORPG brought to life via the $3.2 million donated by almost 20,000 backers in 2017, has broken his silence and successfully sued for a restraining order against the board of his own company, Intrepid Studios.
Steven Sharif quit “in protest” against decisions his board was making last month, after which the board “proceed[ed] with a mass layoff”. Most of the game’s leadership team has since either left or been let go, and a livestream planned for the middle of February seemingly did not go ahead.
Posting on the game’s Discord yesterday, 6th March, Sharif now revealed in a lengthy statement: “Last month, I filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Diego on behalf of Intrepid Studios’ shareholders against Intrepid’s Board of Directors, led by Chair Rob Dawson, and their affiliated entity, TFE Games Holdings LLC. I brought claims for 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.
“My lawsuit is the result of Rob Dawson and his agents trying to dismantle the company I founded and built alongside our community, repurpose Ashes of Creation as a vehicle for their own enrichment, and shift responsibility for Intrepid’s collapse onto me through an orchestrated public campaign.”
Sharif said he had poured all his “resources, millions of dollars, health, and sole focus” into Ashes of Creation and Intrepid, but resigned on 19th January “because [he] was unable to prevent the wrongful decisions of the board, especially their plans to summarily fire the employees without their legally entitled pay”.
Sharif alleges that from 2024, the board of Intrepid has tried to shut down the firm and transfer Ashes of Creation to TFE Games, “cutting out Intrepid’s long-term shareholders, lenders, employees, and community”, and was responsible for the mass layoffs.
Now, a San Diego court has issued a temporary restraining order in Sharifs favour against Dawson, and Dawson and anyone working for him are prohibited “from accessing, using, selling, distributing, or causing anyone to access, use, sell, or distribute the trade secrets of Intrepid”.
“Unfortunately, the damage caused by the board’s actions has already been severe,” Sharif added. “A company that had spent more than a decade building a game and a community was abruptly shut down, employees were terminated without pay or benefits, and years of work were thrown into uncertainty.
“The impact on the people who dedicated their careers to this project, and on the players who supported it, cannot be overstated.”
Although Ashes of Creation sits on a Mostly Negative score on Steam – and its most recent reviews are Overwhelmingly Negative – Sharif asserts the game has generated £6.7 million ($9 million) in gross sales, reached roughly 300,000 monthly active players, and “had approximately 400,000 additional players on the wishlist, and millions of registered accounts”.
He also claims that the game achieved “an approximate 76 percent peak concurrent user retention rate on day 30, a statistic that is extraordinarily rare in the MMORPG genre, particularly for an early access environment”, which he says is why TFE wanted it.
“I categorically deny accusations suggesting that I mismanaged company funds, caused the company’s shutdown, or engaged in any misconduct,” the director added. “Those claims attempt to rewrite the events that actually occurred and divert attention away from the decisions the Board and its cronies made.
“The truth is that I refused to participate in actions I believed were unlawful and destructive to the company, its investors, its employees, and its future. Since the shutdown, I have been fighting as hard as I possibly can, in court, to show that the Board’s actions were wrongful and to fight for the rights and interests of the developers, shareholders, and the player community.”
He also insists that any claims that he did not initially finance the project himself are incorrect, and that “much of the capital provided to the company came through lenders who extended financing based on my personal guarantees and the collateralisation of my own assets and equity”.
According to papers provided by Sharif, the court has awarded the restraining order, writing: “The Court finds the balance of hardships tips sharply toward [Sharif]. Intrepid has already suffered harm to its business and reputation from the likely unlawful foreclosure and sale of its assets to TFE. TFE is poised to access the Trade Secrets Materials and then sell them to a third party with Ashes of Creation. Even if TFE keeps Ashes of Creation to develop itself, Intrepid will have lost its primary valuable asset and any chance of bringing Ashes of Creation to market itself.”
Sharif believes the internal communications, board records, financial documentation, and other materials that will be issued as litigation progresses will support his case, and provide a “far more complete picture of the decisions made, who made them, and how the events leading to the shutdown of Intrepid actually unfolded”.
“Ashes of Creation was never just a corporate asset to flip. It was ten years of work by hundreds of developers and the belief of a community that helped bring it to life,” Sharif concluded.
