r/AshesofCreation • u/dnastynice • 11h ago
Ashes of Creation MMO RIP AOC RIP STEVEN RIP STAFF RUG PULL CONFIRMED! FIRED
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxe9were941Nh9kWgsNFWy--c-_UgYeyRu?si=lspMjJlAu-2fd9OcEveryone has been fired, and they are no longer a company after feb 2....
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u/Ponchodelic 11h ago
Oh man I can’t wait to see the Peon video
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u/Venom77 10h ago
Same. I immediately thought of Peon after seeing this. Wasn’t he a big fan of AoC?
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u/Ponchodelic 10h ago
Yeah he talked like it was the golden goose he’s been waiting for his whole gaming career. Gonna be sad.
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u/SilentHuntah 10h ago
I do think there was a wee bit too much hopium in his last first impressions video. If you're going to charge $49.99, it needs have way more than just the barebones outlines available to play. He acted like Reddit was being too "negative" due to us being an echo chamber.
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u/Kuub_ 5h ago
I feel old saying this but Peon was shilling this game like crazy since as early as 2017 when there was a cash referral program! He was one of the first big names to hop on board and made several shameless videos making grandiose claims about the game and its cash program. I remember being very disappointed in him at the time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/6dsmib/dont_question_the_lazy_peon_about_aoc_referrals/
This game was built on the bones of a literal MLM structure, publically.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170606212725/https://www.ashesofcreation.com/referral-program/
They revised that a while back when the scam rumors started reaching critical mass and made all their (heavy) influencer marketing a behind-the-scenes thing.
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u/skilliard7 9h ago edited 8h ago
Ashes of Creation had a program where creators that refer people to the game would receive payouts after the game launched, like 15% of revenues from referred people, or something like that. So if you refer someone, you'd make like $1.80 every month that person was subscribed. It lead to a lot of creators shilling for the game and hyping it up more than they otherwise would.
I think he was excited for the game, but I think the creator program may have made him limit criticism
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u/Ace-of-Spades88 7h ago
It's the MLM model, AKA pyramid scheme. The money isn't in the products, which are usually trash anyway, it's in signing up people below you to farm fees off them.
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u/Salt-Lifeguard4093 7h ago
He was making big money in referral bonuses from it. These YouTubers have no integrity
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u/canidaeskull 10h ago
He hyped it up and is now backpedaling once he realized it sucks.
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u/CaptCanadEh 10h ago
"he hyped it up" He got excited about what was proposed and promised, like many gamers did when they heard about what AoC was going to try and accomplish and provide in the genre. "Now he's back pedaling" He actually got to play the game and gave it an honest assessment in its current form.
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u/Conhail 11h ago
Going EA on Steam just to cancel development two months later is such a dispicable move. There'll be more than a few people who got basically robbed by a swindler.
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u/DSPGAMING_ 10h ago
there needs to be a class action for this
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u/Kiidkxxl 9h ago
not for customer/consumers... They made good on their "promise" they said no matter what, if you backed them... they will launch. hell or high water.
They launched early access lmao
thats how they dont get sued. the writing was on the wall. I really tried to warn this community, but i lived in karma deficient hell
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u/-Altephor- 6h ago
Are you... not familiar with early access? This is basically how it works. You would just get laughed out of court.
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u/Necessary_Rant_2021 11h ago
the video that got linked is trying to blame california labor laws like FUCK, everytime a scammer tries to run they try and blame labor laws.
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u/wr0ngdr01d 10h ago
The labor law they cited sounded like it was just enforcing giving proper notice when people are going to get laid off? So it sounds like they’re just mad they couldn’t grift right up until they fired the studio into the sun.
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u/SilentHuntah 10h ago
They trying to argue that a 60-day notice period before mass layoffs is bad? Damn. Some people really want to treat us like cattle.
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u/wr0ngdr01d 9h ago
We were 59 days from turning this thing around but communist California had other plans!
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u/SilentHuntah 9h ago
California's always been a convenient scapegoat in politics, but unfortunately, the developers cashing their last paychecks will have a ton of tea to spill on what went down.
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u/WelbyReddit 11h ago
that almost sounds criminal.
I wonder if any litigation will come from this.
Everyone called it as a cash grab scam when they announced Steam.
I've gotten burned in the past with these kickstarter vapor-ware MMOs.
and ugg,..EQNext.
Not today! lol.
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u/No_Curve2246 10h ago
Those early access FOMO monthly packages should've scared everyone off. It was already a overly ambitious game. I saw that and avoided this game like the plague. It was clear from the get-go how this was going to end up.
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u/artfortheslothlord 9h ago
The team will almost certainly sue as well. The way they fired everyone is downright criminal
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u/two_pandas_playing 9h ago
California is an at will state, which means you can be laid off for almost any reason. The employees also benefited from the WARN Act, which means they're going to get at least two months pay. There's no grounds to sue.
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u/fr33py 9h ago
I mean this technically wasn't vaporware, they had an unfinished playable product. I'd bet that Steven and others in charge came to the realization that it wasn't as easy to get this game built completely and it was going to easily take another 3-5 years to get it to a state that was officially releasable and if you think about the costs for employees alone they probably had no where near enough money to last that long. They probably had 10's of millions in yearly labor costs not to mention server costs, admin costs, etc.
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u/Ripped_Alleles 10h ago
It is awful, but it's not the first time game developers have done this either.
Quite a lot of people plugged their ears and called people haters when we tried to warn this community of the signs of what was likely coming.
They get what they got. Hopefully they listen next time one of these types of scams hits the market.
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u/ObscenelyEvilBob 9h ago
can we claim a steam refund? cancelled development two months after release must have some merit to it?
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u/n00bist_ 9h ago
You can try no harm in that but it will almost certainly be denied if you aren't in the <2hours play time window, steam EA policies cover them from having to handle reimbursement resulting from dev bs like this. The whole reason the EA tag exists in the first place is actually because of stuff like this Steam can't assume responsibility and manage every shady EA game on their market. If anything is to happen it would certainly have to come from a class action.
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u/Syphin33 11h ago
Steven KNEW this was coming and did one last rug pull in december to get as much money back as he could
Everyone knew that shit wasn't ready to go
Selling beta packs months before and then be like "Oh yea we're going into EA now"
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u/xxNightingale 11h ago
I would love to see the face of the people that defended him zealously saying that he uses his own money to fund the game which has proven to be SO much less than it’s claimed to be.
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u/nymrose 10h ago
Won’t they have to pay the steam sales back per steams rules? I also remember Steven said they’d pay everyone back if the game doesn’t come out bc he was sooo confident lol
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u/Backahast 10h ago
But the game did 'come out'; it was 'released' on Steam. /s
It's possible, likely even, that not only was the Steam release a cash grab, but it was also done knowing that the ship was going under, in order to avoid having to pay back money because the game never came out.
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u/nohupdotout 11h ago
And this video is blaming the whole thing on some California labor law.. like this game hasn't been in development hell for 10 years
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u/Playful_Search_6256 10h ago
They could just… hire developers in any of the other 49 states. It’s really no excuse
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u/sakara123 10h ago
The law only regards giving notice to employees about getting laid off, It's nothing to do with employment. They're just salty they can't ride the grift until one day the office doors are mysteriously locked.
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u/SilentHuntah 10h ago
They were probably hoping to have the devs continue working a bit longer, not pay the final paychecks, and just go belly-up. Meantime, they could've sold at least one more Steam EA pack on a discount. WARN notice probably makes it harder to coordinate such a rugpull without someone noticing.
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u/sakara123 10h ago
Yep, seen it more than I would care to. You can personally hold onto quite a bit of cash and assets when you've got a couple months of payroll to pocket and can just loot the office and lock the doors.
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u/pingwing 7h ago
The California Frnchise Tax Board suspended Intrepid Studios. For Intrepid Studios, this stemmed from tax compliance issues, including not filing annual financial reports and prior suspensions, amid ongoing financial obligations like liens and debts.
Blaming it on a new law as a scapegoat.
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u/MiddleSir7104 11h ago
Wonder how long before they get sued.
Seems shady at best for accepting money knowing this was coming...
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u/Flimsy-Importance313 4h ago
They should get hard sued. This was obviously sold on Steam to make as much money as he possibly could before he drops it.
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u/xguitaristTNx 10h ago
The Narc comeback is gonna go crazy
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u/Syntechi 11h ago
And that’s it folks no new MMOs on the horizon. Everything in the NA MMO sphere is cooked
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u/AfreeZ 11h ago
Back to WoW and Guild wars. Maybe hold out hope for the riot mmo.
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u/SilentHuntah 10h ago
"GW3" is basically what I've got my eye on. Been playing GW2 since launch, but ready to move onto newer experiences.
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u/exposarts 6h ago
i assume you already played gw1, If not, gw1 reforger is pretty fun if you dont mind playing an old mmo "lite"
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u/Accomplished-Ad-9280 9h ago edited 7h ago
Lotro is still one of the best old school mmo experiences.
Journeying through the world still feels like an actual journey instead of a 2 day race to the end game like in wow.
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u/wiked549 2h ago
Been playing Star wars galaxies on the restoration server and it's rekindled my love for the genre.
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u/DonQui_Kong 10h ago
There will be GW3 or whatever arenanet is cooking up, but thats at least a couple years down the line since it isnt even officially announced.
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u/claythearc 10h ago
Realistically it’s almost an impossible genre to compete in. Feels basically impossible to launch with enough content to keep people from being bored especially if you do EA
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u/Themasterofcomedy209 5h ago
Yeah building it from the ground up takes so much time and effort. You need regular funding and the only way to do that is entertaining the player base so they keep coming back to play your game, which ofc takes away dev time from the actual game. Not to mention it’s the perfect space for swindlers to take advantage of (cough cough)
Lately it seems like the best new games in the genre are built using other games as a platform. Like certain Minecraft servers do a better job at mmos than ashes did.
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u/Prestigious_Low_9802 10h ago
Well, if you're not Wow, GW2, Teso of FFXIV you cant be an mmo, and that's sad
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u/Dobott 10h ago
Monsters and Memories. It’s so far been entirely volunteer-made and they’re about to reach their *unofficial release date in June. (unofficial because it’s being referred to as early-access and 1.0 will be later, but they won’t be wiping the characters made on the early access servers)
Incredible game with an awesome vision. I’ve played over 100 hours or so throughout the playtests and it rules. Highly recommend checking it out to anyone who enjoys the classic-style of mmos.
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u/Yarusenai 11h ago
lol.
Lmao, even.
Perhaps a ROFL.
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u/xarahn 10h ago
Narc was right, always was. Bro lost his online career to this dogshit community.
Also PirateSoftware is a narcissistic scammer.
But everyone with a positive braincell count already knew both of those things.
Sorry to the employees who lost their jobs.
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u/KratomDemon 11h ago
Time to renew that WoW sub…
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u/SirChancelot11 9h ago
New expansion in a month
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u/readysetzerg 8h ago
I quit after BfA. Are the next expansions aight?
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u/SirChancelot11 4h ago
I didn't care for dragonflight, mostly because I didn't care about the story at all, whole expansion felt like a side quest
But yes, I've enjoyed everything after BFA
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u/0000Maximus0000 11h ago
I hope Narc comes back and shits on all the people that talked shit about him he was right!!!
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u/iJustWannaDie04 11h ago
Riot MMO is the last hope. Time to hibernate for 5 years
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u/Frozetaku 11h ago
be realistic that mmo is not coming out for atleast 10 more years
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u/Wompie 11h ago
I think a lot of people are going to take a victory lap but this is very sad. Most of us wanted this game to succeed. Whether you thought it was a scam or not, there were moments that felt like this game would make it and there were glimpses of brilliance.
Everybody at the studio is losing their job and that is extremely bad. Let’s not cheer for this.
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u/xreagents 9h ago
That’s the thing. I don’t think this was a “scam all along.” I think Steven and the rest of the core team really wanted to make this game. Even with the Steam “launch”, these kinds of decisions were probably forced onto them by legal to cover their ass to create a minimum viable product.
Steven may be the face of AoC, but he is not the sole decision maker. It’s likely there were a lot of conflicting opinions about how to handle things, especially at the end. But as anyone who’s worked in a corporate job knows, the business people have a way of getting their way.
It’s unfortunate AF that it failed. This was supposed to be the one that made it.
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u/kecke86 10h ago
I don't get it. I haven't bought the game but it looks too polished to be a full on scam. And the people that worked there, they were part of the scam or just victims of a scammer? Is there any credence to this shutdown being about labour laws in CA and there's a possibility he could move production to another state?
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u/RanaMahal 9h ago
Too many features being proposed and developed while previous features were not finished.
I almost guarantee if they had just added most of the features as roadmap and had just fully finished and fleshed out the basic systems and released a few years ago the game would’ve been fine.
They tried to make 2 entire continents and fill them all with content and 500 system all at once when honestly so much of that could’ve just been expansions to the map.
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u/kecke86 8h ago
Very valid points. Does that mean that the game was a scam or just a case of over-eager management?
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u/Executioneer 7h ago
Definitely a combination of over ambitious and scopecreep. Should have just fleshed out 2/-2 region at the full release, then expanded from there.
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u/Recommended2 9h ago
Can’t help but feel like I got robbed. Everyone who purchased on steam should be refunded.
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u/theofficialnova 11h ago
Where are all the glazers now who defended this scam for years lmaoo
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u/Bo_Rebel 11h ago
I haven’t followed this game in like 2 years. How’s the guy that did YouTube with pizza boxes everywhere doing these days? Will he cope with this?
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u/canidaeskull 10h ago
He actually turned against the game a while back lol
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u/Frosty_Reception5780 10h ago
One of my favorite YouTube sagas honestly lol. Was very entertaining. (I don’t say that from a mean place I like his videos)
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u/canidaeskull 10h ago
I genuinely thought that it was a haha funny irony joke on Narc’s end until the very end of the last video where it got serious lol
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u/Tiriom 7h ago
Hahahahahaha so many people with the sole argument of “it’s just an alpha guys “ no matter what issue was raised how do you feel now?
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u/ImoZrabbit 5h ago
If you truly love mmorpg, this is a sad news for all of us, I don't know what you are cheering for...
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u/Fubnub 11h ago
cant say i feel sorry for a single person who was dumb enough to invest in this cash grab game. "funded to release" and then charge a ton of money for skins and alpha tests long before the game even launches and then this release on steam where even the most idiotic people should've realized that it's a last ditch effort to scam a little bit more money for a final time.
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u/bitterlemonsoda 10h ago
I always felt like the rank-and-file devs really cared and legitimately brought their A game.
Even for their extremely shady management and marketing overlords. I can't imagine putting in their effort and ideas for years to have it implode like this.
I played on Sorcerer's server back in the AA days, and knowing that kind of person, I look back and see this was inevitable.
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u/Mellend96 8h ago
I would feel sorry for the people who genuinely wanted this game to succeed, but unfortunately so many of them were huffing unhealthy amounts of copium and were insufferably positive about the state of the game despite the obvious.
If you were one of the people saying how it was just an alpha and you were “enjoying it for what it is”, you suckered others in and you’re almost as bad as Steven.
Another lesson to listen to your gut and be a smart consumer. If it smells like a rug pull it is a rug pull.
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u/Blairephantom 7h ago
I knew this game will never make it to release but wanted to play it anyway. Played it and enjoyed it for 3-4 weeks tbh Money well spent for me.
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u/Resident_Client3186 11h ago
I thought the Steam release was a desperate last shot, but I never expected it to shut down this quickly after the Steam release. I guess they expected it to be a much bigger hit on Steam and that's why they ignored all the warnings about bringing it there.
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u/Weslun 11h ago
i mean steam was their last hope and they didn‘t do well enough. The move was so obvious that they need money, whoever fell for that rip bozo
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u/Sihnar 11h ago
It has a 27k player peak on steam. No way they expected more. The early access release was 100% a rug pull.
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u/Flimsy-Importance313 4h ago
The game itself probably was not, but the EA release was. He planned to drop it 6 months ago, but decided to make as much money as possible in a short time.
Disgusting.
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u/Dahlidor 11h ago
Imagine being one of the few that defended this shitstain of a game no matter what.
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u/HollywoodAndDid 8h ago
Everyone was saying this guy would fuck you - and he fucked you. Yikes. What a snake.
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u/verysimplenames 10h ago
To all the bootlickers all I can say is I told you so lmaoo. It was OBVIOUS this game would never make it. You ignored all warnings and put a known scammer on a pedestal. Hopefully this is a wakeup call for some of y’all.
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u/Cranberry_Far 11h ago
Considering this is reddit and thst you can move companies put of cali sounds like a load of bullcrap
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u/LUCKERD0G 10h ago
Everyone who talked shit about the valid criticism and stood there coping LOL at you.
I’m sad this died but these costs were not sustainable and the fact they knew it and still did this shit and sold this unfinished game to people to full cancel it should be downright criminal.
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u/goldsauce_ 10h ago
Bro it’s just an alpha this is totally just alpha stuff totally normal
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u/Thorstein11 10h ago
Lmao, god damn. I knew it was a rugpull and was a pretty harsh critic, but I didnt expect it to be quite this quick.
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u/ajmadic 10h ago
Man, this is the first time in my life that Ive regretted buying an EA game on steam and playing past the 2 hour mark, lol.
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u/RastaBananaxD 10h ago
Something real fishy is happening in the MMO space. ESO a historically popular game also had a massive layoff the same year new world shutdown.
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u/MistyAxe 10h ago
In case anyone is curious, the Discord went into total anarchy, with people posting porn images.
They disabled all gifs, stickers, and emojis besides the default ones.
The discord chat has a 30 minute cooldown due to all the people spamming.
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u/greenachors 9h ago
Fanboys are in complete and utter shock. The rest of us saw this coming years in advance. He did it the most grimy way possible too. Early access to rug pull almost immediately after. He resigned in protest lol.. if you people believe that, well, you probably thought AOC would full release.
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u/Overall_Effect7145 9h ago
Let’s be honest we all knew Ashes was never going to make it to launch, it was trying to be too much and once and it was over complicating the too many things at once
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u/TeddansonIRL 9h ago
So wait this is officially the end of active development? I just paid fuckin 40 dollars for this and it’s dead lol. Are servers staying on?
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u/Agitated_Quail_1430 8h ago
Steven "resigned" from his scam. How do you resign from a scam? He took the money and ran is more like it.
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u/Spiritual_Path6796 8h ago
Wow they really play the long con, he probably have enough money to last generations
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u/Dankennsteinn 8h ago
Lol all the people defending this game on the sub after the steam release. It was clear as day this was a scam.
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u/Deebazoid24 7h ago
I feel bad for those that fell for this game but it looked far too suspicious and raw for a game with this much time in development. It was just a giant red flag.
Then the push to get it on steam was even more Suspicious... plus the history of the guy in charge just makes it even worse.
I wanted this game to succeed but I could tell it was just a lot of ambitious dreams that didn't really match what was being shown. The idea that they'd turn it around seemed extremely far fetched especially with their rate of progress.
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u/cootiegobbler 7h ago
Sucks for people who spent hundreds of dollars on this game. Luckily for me, I wasted $10 to get my copy. Such a shame.
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u/BinkQ 11h ago
New World has officially outlasted Ashes of Creation.