MMORPG fans had high hopes for Ashes of Creation, but then it launched and quickly shut down merely 2 months after its release, leaving enraged players to review-bomb the game that raised $3.2 million on Kickstarter.
Its CEO, Steven Sharif, resigned and filed a lawsuit against Intrepid Studios' Board of Directors soon after, accusing it of "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."
The whole thing is a big mess that became even worse when investigative gaming journalist NefasQS revealed an alleged ledger that points to Sharif and his husband, John Moore, using the studio's money to fund their "lavish lifestyle" (again, allegedly).
The studio's ledger contains "expenses paid and deposits that paint a troubling picture of a company that was on the threshold of financial death at multiple points in its history" from 2015 to 2026, according to NefasQS.
The spreadsheet shows many questionable transactions, including payments made to a personal chef, auction sites, as well as cigar and TCG sellers. One curious recipient of Intrepid's money is Gore Oil, which, NefasQS says, received $81,166.Apparently, Gore Oil was the deed owner of Sharif and Moore’s $4.9 million mansion.
NefasQS also mentioned how Sharif's and John Moore's wages spiked almost twice in number in 2024, eventually jumping to over $400,000 for each...
Although on appeal the court distinguished that there was new information in the claim, the court ultimately found the new information was not material, nor was it plead with particularity. The U....