Ashes of Creation

Fight

Fight

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If your game has a development cycle of over 10 years, it's time to hang it up. Prolonged development often indicates either a scam designed to extend as long as possible or a lack of focus and competence to achieve the initial vision.

All these MMOs, the perpetual development cycle has become the norm. Launch with a smaller, more focused product. If the game is enjoyable, it will naturally grow over time, and you can release expansions. Spending a decade on development without releasing anything suggests that the project was never viable to begin with.

How many times do we have to learn the same lessons?
 
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moonarchia

moonarchia

The Scientific Shitlord
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Fight said:
If your game has a development cycle of over 10 years, it's time to hang it up. Prolonged development often indicates either a scam designed to extend as long as possible or a lack of focus and competence to achieve the initial vision.

All these MMOs, the perpetual development cycle has become the norm. Launch with a smaller, more focused product. If the game is enjoyable, it will naturally grow over time, and you can release expansions. Spending a decade on development without releasing anything suggests that the project was never viable to begin with.

How many times do we have to learn the same lessons?
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*stares at Pantheon*

At least once more.
 
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Kirun

Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
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Mahes said:
In the end, none of us are receiving our final paychecks
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If this is true, it is highly illegal. Some states don't require it be paid immediately but it still has to be paid. 99% of employers will do it immediately anyways to stay ahead of the law.
 
Skylancer81

Skylancer81

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Ha ha ha ha. Sorry the second they "shifted" between unreal engines I knew it was vaporware. It "looked" great, but come on we all knew it was never a real game.
 
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Warrik

Warrik

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Steven transferring his $5.5M house to his husband in November 2025 sure sounds like someone hiding assets.
 
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Mahes

Mahes

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Kirun said:
If this is true, it is highly illegal. Some states don't require it be paid immediately but it still has to be paid. 99% of employers will do it immediately anyways to stay ahead of the law.
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If you go down in the responses, she says that exact thing. The action is illegal.
 
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Xerge

Xerge

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every single investor has MLM ties. repost from reddit.
  • Karen Boreyko → Co-founder of Vemma Nutrition. A MLM shut down as pyramid scheme by FTC in 2015. Is a financial backer for Intrepid.
  • Steven Sharif → Early success in XanGo, a MLM nutrition company. Steven was recruited at age 18. Left the company at age 24 to go into real estate.
  • Tim Sharif → Founder of 310 Nutrition. Selling AoC merch on his nutrition store front. Does not appear to be MLM. Tim also is founder, owner, and chairman of several other health/nutrition companies which are all direct to consumer companies (not MLM)
  • Jason Caramanis → Ya Ya Legacy Trust is a share holder of Intrepid preferred stock. Caramanis is a prominent figure in MLM achieving top ranks like Imperial Diamond Director, as well as investor/deal-maker in several other wellness MLM companies. Jason was high ranking in Jeunesse Global, which was also accused of pyramid scheme.
  • Robert Dawson → Co-founder of Jeunesse Global (see above). Robert held a lien against Intrepid Studios. The lien was transferred in January to TFE Games Holding LLC.
 
V

Vinjin

Lord Nagafen Raider
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I still can't tell through all of that if this was in fact a scam or just sheer incompetence.

With so many ties at the top to previous MLM companies, a scam seems plausible although not exactly the wisest venture to build it around unless you knew you were guaranteed WoW-like levels of subs/revenue, which they didn't have.

Sheer ego and incompetence seems more likely the cause of its demise, but even then...to be where they were in development after 10+ years?? That's such a massive and epic amount of stupidity and incompetence that it seems unbelievable.

What was the total $$ amount invested in this thing again? North of $200M?
 
V

vegetoeeVegetoee

Trakanon Raider
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This was totally incompetence. Overpromise, under...er never deliver. That's the state of Modern MMOs! Make a bunch of shit up that sounds great, take fundraising money and 10 years later give up or go broke. If these people would scope shit out and be realistic, you'd have AOC out with major updates for the weird pvp shit they wanted in the works, but no we can't have nice things. We have to waste years going from UE4 to UE5 and years on other useless shit that isn't core to an MMO in the first fucking place. C'est la vie.

PS: I did not give a dime to these shits. After 5 years you could see they were full of it, failing badly.
 
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Srathor

Srathor

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Sounds to me like Sharif was likely rubbing his huge success in his old work buddies faces, then hard times, and his old work buddies helped while fucking him over.
 
jayrebb

jayrebb

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Xerge said:
every single investor has MLM ties. repost from reddit.
  • Karen Boreyko → Co-founder of Vemma Nutrition. A MLM shut down as pyramid scheme by FTC in 2015. Is a financial backer for Intrepid.
  • Steven Sharif → Early success in XanGo, a MLM nutrition company. Steven was recruited at age 18. Left the company at age 24 to go into real estate.
  • Tim Sharif → Founder of 310 Nutrition. Selling AoC merch on his nutrition store front. Does not appear to be MLM. Tim also is founder, owner, and chairman of several other health/nutrition companies which are all direct to consumer companies (not MLM)
  • Jason Caramanis → Ya Ya Legacy Trust is a share holder of Intrepid preferred stock. Caramanis is a prominent figure in MLM achieving top ranks like Imperial Diamond Director, as well as investor/deal-maker in several other wellness MLM companies. Jason was high ranking in Jeunesse Global, which was also accused of pyramid scheme.
  • Robert Dawson → Co-founder of Jeunesse Global (see above). Robert held a lien against Intrepid Studios. The lien was transferred in January to TFE Games Holding LLC.
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The steam launch no doubt critical to making them whole. This is the biggest exit scam in gaming history.
 
Kirun

Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
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jayrebb said:
The steam launch no doubt critical to making them whole. This is the biggest exit scam in gaming history.
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Yup. They knew Steam would have to eat the refunds to salvage their reputation as a platform for gaming amongst consumers. Steam will likely change policies in the future as a result of these shitbags.

There's 0 chance they didn't know this was on the horizon prior to releasing on Steam.
 
Burns

Burns

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Kirun said:
Yup. They knew Steam would have to eat the refunds to salvage their reputation as a platform for gaming amongst consumers. Steam will likely change policies in the future as a result of these shitbags.

There's 0 chance they didn't know this was on the horizon prior to releasing on Steam.
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Steam is giving refunds out of their own pocket? I assumed, in a case where bankruptcy is likely, it would be more like chargebacks through their main payment processing account until the pending funds that were due to be payed to AOC dry up, then everyone left is shit out of luck.
 
Uriel

Uriel

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I hope employees and consumers do everything in their power to extract every dollar they can from Steven. I didn't play it, but I followed it and was hoping it would turn out good some day.
 
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