Long-in-development MMORPG Ashes of Creation, having been released as an Early Access title on Steam in December, already seems to be in peril. Director Steven Sharif, along with several of the game’s senior development staff have recently announced their departure from the Intrepid Studios, and Margaret Krohn took to LinkedIn to confirm that the team “was all laid off”. Sharif noted in his statement that his resignation came “in protest” of decisions that were being made by the studio’s board, which he described as decisions he “could not ethically support.”
“Control of the company shifted away from me, and the Board began directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out,” wrote Sharif on the Ashes of Creation Discord server (via PCGamesN). “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 WARN Act notices and proceed with a mass layoff.”
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) act is a US labor law that requires a company with a hundred or more employees to provide an advance notice of 60 days for mass lay-offs.
“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.”
In her LinkedIn post, Krohn thanked the Ashes of Creation community for its support of the MMO’s long development cycle. “To the Ashes of Creation community – you are some of the most passionate, dedicated players I’ve ever seen in this industry. I genuinely wish I could have done more for you. I gave everything I had, and did my very best with what was within my power,” she wrote. The inciting incident was noted as one she didn’t see coming either. “As for how this all ended… I don’t really have the words. It wasn’t what I expected. But I’m holding onto the good because there was so much of it,” she wrote.
Players that might have already picked up an Early Access copy of Ashes of Creation and are looking for refunds will be glad to know that Steam is seemingly already investigating the issue. As caught by one such player on Reddit, requesting a refund through Steam led to a response that indicated that Valve was “aware of the issue” already.
“Sorry to hear about this issue and I understand your concern,” wrote a Steam customer support representative. “We are aware of the issue and are currently investigating this further.”
These sudden departures have led to quite few negative Steam reviews for Ashes of Creation, with the current average sitting at “Mostly Negative”. Many of these believe that the MMO might be shutting its servers down. In the meantime, however, the remaining team at Intrepid Studios has published its own “Director’s Letter”, where it said that development plans for the game will be discussed through a Twitch livestream on February 13, 11AM PST.
Among the subjects to be discussed are performance and stability problems, content and system bugs, issues surrounding caravans, crates, and risk-versus-reward gameplay, PvP and corruption items, and the impact of real-money trading, bots and cheating.