PirateSoftware
GAME DEV Q/A 💜 Go Make Games 💛 @FerretSoftware !Heartbound !Website !TTS
02-01-2026 · 13h 22m
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Why hello good morning and yes we will be talking about ashes of creation yes we will
Don't worry, we will talk about it.
It's not like I haven't talked about it enough in the last few days, so...
Now we know what the monkey spot took for the Wish of Hytale being saved.
Uh, I think we're gonna go really deep into it, actually, and by going really deep into it,
we're gonna go through a lot of math, which I think is gonna be interesting,
and team composition on Ashes of Creation, because it makes no sense.
I don't know who buttered cat. Hell yeah.
There's a single owner? Yeah, we'll talk about that. It's going to get weird.
I'm actually going to swap this real quick.
Let's switch it over to just chatting. I'm going to put this up here and say...
Change the enhancement to the stream, we're going to start off talking about Ashes, it's
probably going to take a little while, it will likely get turned into a video.
So let me go get some water, then we'll get started.
of
all right if
and
and
use major salt ornithopter and do nice
and
I exist
All right ashes of creation is dead
So we're on that now this sucks actually it's it sucks, but it's also like
Not really unexpected at all. Yeah dead dead dead as in not coming back as in dead actual dead
that Stephen Sharif has stepped down.
It is over, my dude.
So he stepped down, everyone is getting fired, it's over.
Yeah, let me go grab his official statement on this.
Like a whole thing.
So this is the official statement from Stephen Sharif
over on Discord.
He said, I can make a limited statement
in my personal capacity,
but not on behalf of the company regarding the situation.
Control of the company shifted away from me
and the board began directing actions
that I could not ethically agree with or carry out.
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 team resigned.
Following those departures,
the board made the decision to issue warrant act notices
and proceed with a mass layoff.
I can't responsibly speak to further details at this time
due to ongoing legal and governance matters.
What I can say is the developers and staff acted in good faith and bed and
deserved better than the uncertainty they're now facing incredibly dismayed by
the situation.
So this brings up a couple of interesting things.
What God damn board.
What board?
Stephen Schrieff was the director of the company.
We all bought into this game knowing that he was the only one.
What board?
So I asked this question and I was like, what the hell is going on?
And the only person that I've been able to get any information out of is another employee that spoke to me that had been talking to us throughout all of the phases.
Because I've been talking to the devs a shitload because I've been playing, I've been part of the Ashes community for five years.
And they said that a board was formed six months ago and that everything has gone downhill since then.
I don't know anything about that as a player though. The only person I've ever heard this from now is that
employee. That's it.
Where the hell did this happen? Why the hell did this happen? And why was nobody informed of this?
What why?
If that exists, why?
That's my question because that makes no goddamn sense. Yeah, why did it happen? Why?
Yeah. And the employee I spoke to today, by the way, I found out about this today,
because I put an announcement to our discord and I was like, this is stupid. Let me pull this up.
I'll show you the announcements that I actually made for this. We're going to do
guild news. I put it up here. I put these questions up. And it's now for the really
weird questions. One, Steven stated many times he was the sole owner that answered to no one.
It did not have a board. Why is there a board suddenly?
And he said, board was formed six months ago. The employee did. So, and that's it.
Will they under the Kickstarter pledge to refund all backers of the game is cancelled?
Betting on knowing that one for me. They originally stated that if the game doesn't come
out, they would refund all of the Kickstarter backers. I don't see that happening. I just don't.
I doubt that entirely. They'll probably dissolve everything and liquidate and
money will do whatever it's going to do from there.
They owe a lot of debts and shit too.
So three, why do they go forward with a steam launch with this kind of instability?
It feels like it was done in bad faith.
You get money before closure.
That seems likely to me right now.
So this is kind of where I'm at, unlike those are the big questions.
Those ones that I care about the most outside of this.
I've also put out a big statement and I said, woke up the ashes creation
being shut down.
I can honestly say that I'm not very surprised after this current phase
on Steam. January of 2025, the team at Intrepid was doing a good job.
There were bugs, performance issues and moderation problems,
but they communicated and handled things relatively well.
We had a bunch of videos come out at that time.
Everything was super fine. And that was it, right?
It was kind of a shit show, but it was an alpha and they were moving
the right direction and talking, and that was good.
And nothing there was screaming horrifying, right?
It was a little scuffed, but that was it.
Fast forward to this current phase on Steam and everything imploded.
Tons of content that we reported is broken back in 2025 was still unfixed even if it's extremely low hanging fruit
And you're talking really low-hanging fruit like I can't sell multiple items at once
at all
Ever you have to click the item click sell and then click confirm for every item you own
like just really
Weird basic shit or all of the gathering commissions from levels one to ten just don't work
Or construction house being misspelled is crusuits what is it?
Crosstiton hosu or some shit. It was like insane
Yeah, weird stuff like really weird
tiny bugs that are just like
Why didn't you just that's a that's an easy one. Yeah, it was like crouton hosu
Construcitan hosu. We made fun of it a lot. The systems that were built on were
developed in weird directions that didn't seem to make sense or feel good
overall. One of the things that they did was they added like 500 of these gray
items that added no gameplay value at all. You just had to buy them to be able
to do your craft. So if you wanted to make thread, you had to buy wax off
this vendor, walk back 10 feet and then put it in the thing. This didn't
added a gameplay, but it did add 500 items of descriptions that they had to
write, icons that they had to implement, and vendors and vendor space that they
had to implement. All of that, all of that is just tech debt. You've just added
500 items of work that you now have to maintain in perpetuity across all
localizations for no gameplay. And I talked about this a ton about how
this is just a mistake and doesn't actually help anything, doesn't make
the game better for players, doesn't improve gameplay in any way and just
generates work for the sake of generating work.
Another one that they did was they added sport fishing.
Sport fishing was ironically probably the best implemented
profession in the game. It's incredibly well done. It felt
really good. You could catch fish and do everything in it like
the whole system was complete and correct. There's a problem
though. It was a direct one to one copy from Arcage. There
was actually no changes between an Arcage. Even catching the
fish minigame when you went to the right and left, it only did one damage to the
fish like it did in Arcage. When the fish died at the end, it actually started
jumping the water to go pick it up just like you did in Arcage. The boat design
was actually the same between the two. In fact, let me, let me go grab the boat
design so I can show this to you. Pretty sure I sent this to Winky. Let me
grab this. Yeah, yeah, check this out. So here we have the boat design
from ashes of creation. Right? There it is. It's got the radar on the back. It's got
the two ramps down the side, and it's got the the holds on the side for the fish.
And here, right next to it, we have the boat design from Archage, you know, with
the radar in the back and the ramps down the side. Do you know why those
ramps are on there? So you can jump into the water and get the fish and
and then get back onto your boat.
So not only was the feature a direct copy paste,
and you could actually go and watch a video
on doing sport fishing in our cage,
and it told you everything to do in Ashes of Creation.
I brought this up directly to Stephen Sharif, by the way.
I put this directly in the channel with him,
and I was like, I would like an explanation for this,
and he never responded to me.
In a private DM with him and Margaret,
he never responded to that.
I was like, I want an answer to this because this is really gross.
And I don't like that at all, man.
Like I was here to play a new MMO that was interesting and your vision.
And I am getting an archage private server.
And that's not what I signed up for.
Never responded.
I think that's, that's nasty dude.
Shouldn't have been done.
Shouldn't have been done at all.
And I actually wrote that in my review too.
If we go down here, I have the review, but sport fishing is
Direct 101 copy of the Archage of Sport Fishing System with legitimately no changes made.
The boats are the exact same layout and design, as well as in order to facilitate the system.
You can watch a video guide on Sport Fishing for Archage, and you will know absolutely
every component of Ashes of Creation's Sport Fishing System down to the seagull indicators
for fishing pools.
Literally the same.
Everything.
Every asset.
It's insane.
Fishing minigame, doing one damage when pulling left and right, even fishing symbol
indicators above your character.
It sucks to see this in a game as it's one of the most well put together systems and
does not iterate or innovate on archage original design at all.
Just straight up carving that.
It's exactly the same.
Down to everything.
It was, I was like, what are you doing?
So this all happened this phase, by the way.
On top of that, the moderation is basically non-existent.
So players routinely spouting racial slurs, threats, hate speech and global all day.
In any of these games, people would, in any other game, people would be banned
for this.
Straight up.
They would be banned.
They just weren't at all.
And it wasn't just at me.
I know it's easy to be like, oh, that's just a pirate's effort.
No, it was at a shitload of people.
There were just, there were just people on our server that would just get up every
day and just like say a bunch of stuff that was anti-Semitic in global all day long.
And then switch characters the next day and do it again, just over and over and
over again, over and over and over again.
And everybody in the server would report them every day.
Like I think I had like 40 alts of that dude on my ignore list.
And he just never got banned, he'd get reported, but nothing would happen.
So then when this happened to like a really nasty extent, and it started happening really
bad, there was actually a guy in our server that was trying to form groups to quote, go
kill all the LGBT people.
That was his quote, right?
He wanted to go do that.
They was forming groups to go do it.
I took this directly to Stephen Shariff and Margaret in a group chat with them.
And I said, this is, this is awful.
You guys need to do something about this and also ones that were being set against me.
And Margaret responded to this after eight days.
First, she said, oh, our tickets are really backed up.
We haven't really gotten a response on this.
We haven't gotten any answers, right?
And then finally, she responds to this, or the tickets respond to me.
And then I have an extra talk with her because the tickets responded with, we're
not going to tell you what we do.
So we looked at the dude's account that was doing this stuff and he didn't get
banned.
He didn't even get like a, like a tent ban.
He was on the same day, every day for like six to eight hours a day.
And I was like, what the hell is going on here?
Right.
So I reached out to Margaret and I was like, what are you guys doing?
Why, why is this happening?
Like this is very clear case of ban the dude, obviously.
And I can pull this up.
Um, I've got it in here in the guild news cause I actually sent it to the
guild too.
She said, quote, we want to give people a chance to course correct before we
move to irreversible actions.
You want to give people a chance to course correct before you ban them when they're in your server
in global, stating that they want to build a group to go kill the LGBT people.
Okay, okay, Intrepid, that's a nice, yeah, great, fantastic job.
job. That one is why I quit the game three days ago, by the way. The moment it happened,
I stopped doing it. Like I stopped playing the game. Eight days later, I quit and I put
that out to the guild as an announcement for that. Yeah, hate speech and global all
day. In any of the games, people will be banned immediately. I went to bat for Intrepid
many times over the years, encouraging people to give them a chance, removing misinformation,
showing community all the best parts of the game.
So I'd be constantly doing that for you guys for years.
I've been playing it, what, two years now?
And also I have owned the game or at least had a key
since 2021.
On a personal level, I'm incredibly disappointed
in the entire company now.
This isn't the kind of environment
that I want to build a community around
and not one I personally want to support.
I ended up quitting the game three days ago due to this
and now it's been shut down entirely.
So I put out my announcement to the guild on 128
is when that came out, January 28th.
And I was dead.
That's four days, I guess.
I enjoyed my time playing Ash's All of You,
regardless of the shit show that it became.
Looking forward to whatever new adventures
we had out on in the future.
So when that moderation shit was going on,
you see here January 9th, I put in a review,
a massive review, and I gave it a negative review.
And it's been up there since January 9th.
I updated on January 10th.
That was the last time we got updated.
Two things stood out to me on this.
One, this is important.
I have played this game for about 3000, 4000 hours in total
because I played it a shitload before it came to Steam.
Just a shitload.
Two, it says product received for free.
This is a lie.
I bought this game from Intrepid off platform in 2021
for $375.
Really early adopter.
This was five years ago, and that's how much it cost them, right?
When I went to steam, when they went to steam, you get the game for free.
If you bought it from intrepid and now it marks all of those reviews as
product received for free, which is wrong.
That pissed me off.
So I had to put a thing at the top of this and be like,
despite the label on this review, I did not receive this game for free.
I bought it through their website years back and ashes was added to my
steam account when they moved this platform from their own launcher.
So that's super obnoxious.
I'm gonna go pull this up actually and I go pull up the ashes of creation website
I can actually show you guys this transaction.
It's got my account inventory.
Where is it?
Transaction history.
I
Grab it there
Yes, you guys can see this
Stripe
$375 back in the day. This was on June 4th, 2021 is when I bought that
So yeah, I bought the game ages ago and I've been part of it ever since
Yep. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying is like dude. This is not great dude
Like it's super not good, but this was this was bad to an extent that I was like I don't want to be a part of this game
And I had this whole conversation with Margaret and Steven didn't say a word by the way
You said a scam game. Nark was right. No, Nark was not right. Nark was not correct at all
I put out a whole video about that
Narc's claim was that the devs weren't doing anything and then showed a video of an entire desert that was big and open and flat
because he went to the bottom right corner of the map where it wasn't developed yet and it was like they didn't develop this
which showed like 1% of the overall map, if even in an area that was not finished yet and then claimed it wasn't finished
and I put out a video about that when he did that. He was completely disingenuous about that.
So, no, I know everybody wants to like shout the NARC was right narrative, but that shit's
not correct.
In fact, I've got a video refuting it right here, you know, the one that I put out originally.
I think that's really important to understand.
It's really easy to like go in and shout like some mindless bullshit.
But you have to be honest about what it is that that dude was claiming and realize
that what he was claiming is not correct at all.
Yeah, there, you can go watch that video yourself.
Yeah, no, he was not correct.
I know that you want to shout that it's you have to understand something ashes of creation is a shit show
And it should not exist on steam
should not
at all
But nark was still wrong and you have to understand that because what he was claiming was a lie at the time
Legitimately so
Yeah, people you have to have nuance and i'll show you why like if we go pull up this video
nark's claim
Let me go grab this. See this area right here? See that?
Norquen went out to the edge of the map in this location,
based out here and also turned around to show, grab this.
See this? See what he's doing? That.
See the map down here where you can see the edge of the map there.
We go a little bit forward and you could see here the edge of the map there.
He went all the way to the bottom of the desert, the edge of the map.
Instead of showing you all of the rest of this environment of which there's a shitload of extra stuff
The rest of the entire desert dude, so no he was just full of shit
and
There's tons of that all of this like he didn't show you any of this he was like it's empty
Yeah
He took you to the most barren area of the map and then was like the game looks like this and misled a ton of people
So go watch that video, and you'll see no, Narc was not correct.
Narc mislead you even though the game has failed now.
And it has failed entirely because the dev team has fumbled it.
To be clear. Yeah.
Yeah, it's like a really weird area to go to that.
Version being a city mayor since forever?
Being a city mayor? What do you mean version?
Narc tried to warn you? No.
I'm going to be rude with you.
Narc was making content, dude.
He was making content and he wasn't trying to warn you.
He misled you on something.
He was current content farming.
And that was it.
Narc was not correct.
He wasn't entirely wrong.
No, but he did lie about the desert.
And that's what I refuted in that video because he lied about it, dude.
Like he was like, look, it's empty.
It's not empty.
That shit was rage bait, dude.
Yeah, that shit is just rage bait and you have to be honest about that, dude.
But no, AOC was not in a good position.
It has been in a bad spot this entire phase and I have shit on it the entire time.
Yeah, entirely so.
Do you think steam will give refunds?
I almost guarantee it 100% dude.
Yep.
Yeah, I almost guarantee it's going to give refunds because they're in early
access, they've popped this up and now they're saying the game is dead.
just go put in your refund request like straight up. Yeah, I would ask for one.
I'm not getting a refund because I bought it back in the day.
There's no way I'm getting money back. It's, it's been five years.
It was over stripe. Like there's no way you did ask for refund.
I got denied an hour later.
If there's enough of a stink, Steve, like steam will do it for all the players.
Yeah. If they denied it twice, I'd wait, man.
What about Kickstarter refunds?
They claimed they were going to give us kicks or refunds.
I guarantee that's not going to happen. There's no way.
If they did that, I'd be amazed like completely amazed
Stephen will cover the refunds from his own pockets. I'm pretty sure
I'm gonna tell you this right now and this is kind of a dick statement
Bro's probably gonna have to ask the board first because apparently that exists now
Now, ridiculous bullshit.
The board, dude.
That pisses me off.
The whole reason that we bought into this game in the first place was because it wouldn't
have investors.
It wouldn't have some oversight.
And he even stated multiple times there was no board.
There's no one that he actually has to, you know, be addressed by like, or addressed
to none of that shit.
He was his own man. And that was the whole point. And now suddenly there's a board and
he's lost control. God, that pisses me off. You bought the game in July 2nd, 2017. There's
no getting refund. No, mine was in 2021. You were even before me. Sense of betrayal.
It's not even a sense of betrayal. It's just, oh, we gotta wait on ads. We're
We're going to wait in the ads and we'll talk about it.
Yeah, we'll talk about it.
We'll wait in the ads, waiting in the ads.
There's a ton of people saying that only he and his husband
are part of the board.
We'll get into that.
We're going to talk about some things.
Give me a sec.
I'm going to hide this,
because it's got some sensitive info on it.
And I'm going to hold this.
Give me a sec.
I cannot show you this full document.
It has people's addresses on it.
I'm not gonna do that.
So I'm gonna cut some stuff out.
We're gonna hide that and then we'll talk about it.
It is a public document,
but I'm not gonna display that shit on stream.
I came prepared.
I have things.
Same as on Reddit, probably, but I'm not going to display it.
I don't want to display people's addresses even if they're public documents.
I think that's like not a good idea, to be honest.
Yeah, I got receipts.
Now I know who's on the board, bro, me too.
Yeah, me too.
That dude's bad.
He sold the house in November?
Weird.
I don't care about that, to be honest with you.
Yeah, I don't want to show somebody's address, right. That's not what I care about. What I care about is this.
It's high-tail 10 out of 10 for me, yeah. All right, ads are over. We're back. So, somebody brought up the idea that it shows that only
Steven and his husband are on the board. What they're talking about is this document.
So, I've removed their addresses. I don't like the idea of somebody's address on stream. The document is public.
it is, it is a public document. You can go find it if you want to do this. It's not like a doxed one
or anything like that. But Stephen Schrieff and John Moore are the officers of the company. They're
the chief financial officer and chief executive officer. I don't know if this is true, but the
claim is that they're married, right? That's just him and his husband, whatever, right? With
that in mind, these are the only officers of the company. What is the board? Where is the board?
That's the CFO and CEO and Secretary.
So, this is weird and the only person that I have talked to out of everyone
that would have any knowledge of this is a employee.
And I have, the only person I've talked to is one employee
that we've been talking to throughout all of the phases and they said
that there was a board that was implemented six months ago.
And I found out about that today.
As a player, there's no way we would have known that. They've never announced this.
They've never said anything about this. And I think it would have changed a lot of people's opinions about the game
should they have known this. So consumers not knowing that suddenly you've changed your entire direction and now you have a
governing board inside. It's kind of a weird-ass thing to do.
It's incredibly suspicious and I don't know why that happened and I don't like that.
So yeah, what about this? What is this?
Let's go see this.
There's going to be a lot of documents and bullshit coming out.
I want to talk about a lot of them.
The notice of tax lien stuff.
I don't know anything about that yet.
Yeah.
I know that they have some debts and some bullshit going on and some woman named Karen
now owns it all.
I don't know how that shit works.
Right?
I have no idea.
This is over a marriage?
No.
Nobody said that.
Now, there's one next thing that I want to go into.
Yeah, I don't know anything about the Karen thing at all.
This is actually their LinkedIn.
It shows the breakdown of all of the employees and what role that they had at the company.
Stephen stated that they had over 250 employees, but as per LinkedIn they only had 206.
With that in mind, the thing that bothers me about this is the actual distribution of
roles.
Do you see something weird here?
Do you see something weird here?
What do you see that's weird here?
Why is 50% of the team art and design?
Why is QA a sliver?
So let's go look at the actual numbers here because this is freaking weird, dude.
This is really weird.
I have never seen a design team with this distribution, literally ever, ever.
And this matches with what we saw as players in the game.
So you have engineering, right?
Shitload of engineering stuff.
Shitload of art and design.
It's actually stretched this one out because we don't have enough space.
That's not what I wanted. Come back. You know, whatever. Fine. You're like that now
scuffed like the game done
So we've got 101 arts and design
We have 65 engineering, right?
You have
nine quality assurance
And we wonder why the bugs were in the game
Or why it took three hours to do a patch
And then two hours to revert the patch
What the shit is this employee distribution dude
That does not make any sense
That makes no sense
But it matches with what we saw in the game a massive increase in the amount of stuff
You see in the open world environments were spreading out very quickly
They were working on the mesh net stuff to make it so that the environment like the dynamic
Messing of servers would work that takes a lot of your engineering team and
Then the game was riddled with bugs and garbage
Right makes no sense to see that. Did we get scammed? I?
Think I
Don't feel like scam is the right word. I think it's easy to use that word I
Think they believed they were making something really cool. I think they believed it
Think this was mismanaged into the ground. I think a scam is intentional. Does that make sense? I
Think a scam is intentional
I think they actually wanted to make a cool game
But they had no freaking idea how and I think what they've done with this board implementation six months ago
That's dubious at best. That's weird and
Going to steam feels like a rug pull
I'd say it's mismanaged you shit
this
Employee distribution makes no sense
This feels like incompetence more than malice.
Going to steam at the very end,
when you know everything's falling apart
to try and get as many sales as possible,
that feels like malice.
That is the thing that I would say feels like malice.
This, this feels like incompetence.
Does that make sense?
Can they course correct?
No, it's over.
Stephen resigned, dude, they're done.
Like that's GG, man.
The one thing that I will see in this
is I'm waiting to see if this board,
whoever they are, the shadow government that they've invoked,
tears the company apart and sells all of these components
as Unreal Engine components.
Because if you have a meshing server tech,
that's a good piece of money to sell, isn't it?
You could sell that.
That's a product now.
So I'm waiting to see if they do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you have debts to pay. Bingo. Yep. 100% that will happen. Yeah.
I mean, you've got a shitload of assets. You've got a shitload of assets. You've got a shitload
of technology there. You've got the meshing server system. You can sell all of that.
And I think that's, that seems likely to me, if that makes sense. It's still like
850 K to the hosting company. Yeah, but according to Steven, they were burning 850 K every week
That was his post on Reddit, man
That shit doesn't make any sense
Why would you number one? Why would you ever tell anyone that?
That's not a flex, man
That's like whipping yourself in the back and be like look at that
Isn't that cool? Like why would you why transparency? It wasn't a transparency. It was like a flex at a guy
It was super weird
It's a really weird statement to make
The math is definitely not mathin. Yeah, 850k a week with a team like this 850k a week makes sense, but it's a weird thing to say
Yeah
The board running intrepid is this real or a meme. It's probably gonna be a meme isn't it? Are you memin?
Let me see this man
You can't you can't just
All right guys
I know this might be upsetting but we found the board running intrepid. Are you ready?
We have a photo of them.
That's the board. That's them.
Horrifying, isn't it? I know. I know. Sorry to dox them like this,
but somebody had to do it. You know, the people deserve to know.
I'm really sad about this legitimately so because this game felt great in 2025 early 2025. They were going in the right direction. Everything felt awesome. They were fixing shit. They were communicating. And then middle of 2025, they just shit themselves. And they never recovered.
right direction. Everything felt awesome. They were fixing shit. They were communicating.
And then middle of 2025, they just shit themselves. And they never recovered. Literally at all.
And like it blows to watch this. It blows to watch this huge amount of potential. But
like, I want to show you this because this is important to understand is like, I was
not quiet about the problems with this game at all. Ever. I was bringing the shit
directly to them to show them this stuff and being like, yo, this is,
this is just terrible, dude, even with the sport fishing thing.
Let me see if we can find my sport fishing stuff here.
Where'd it go?
I think I said it to cross.
Hold up.
Or I said it to, I might have sent that to Winky as well.
Yeah, I did.
I sent all this shit to Winky.
I've been talking to Winky about this this whole time.
This is the post that I sent to Steven.
I actually put this into the group chat with Steven Margaret.
And I said, if something's been really bothering me as a player and developer, why is sport
fishing a direct one-on-one copy of the game system in Arcage?
I don't say this lightly, mind you, as iteration and improvement can make existing systems
from other games into fantastic new experiences.
This isn't what's happening here, though.
It's just a copy.
As shown in this video from 2350 and beyond, the sport fishing system in Arcage worked
as such.
fishing rod and lure, get in a boat, use the boat's radar to find nearby
sport fishing locations. These locations are marked visually by a swarm of
seagulls. Use chum in the water under these seagulls. Cast your line in the
water using a locational reticle. Perform a mini game in which left and right do
one damage. Up and down do lots of damage to the fish. Note the images
above your head and your character while doing so. When the fish dies, jump
in the water to retrieve it. Get back on your boat with the fish using
ramps that were designed into the boat for this purpose. Take the fish home
and sell it to an NPC. This is exactly the same between both games. It's not even close.
It's the same. And I was like, the most well implemented profession system in your game
is a direct copy from the game you loved the most. That's, that's not a ration. That's
not innovation. That's just theft. Like, and the part that's really funny to me
is that this didn't work in ashes. Do you know why?
Because in ashes, when you get your boat for 25 gold and it dies,
you have to buy the whole boat over again or 18 gold,
depending on which boat you get minus the cost of parts.
And in our cage, when that happened,
you repaired it for the cost of basically one fish,
which was one gold and there was no repair option in ashes.
So they copied the system wholesale without understanding the economic
systems that drove it to be fun. Which is why it didn't work in ashes. It's just like,
it's wild, dude. It's wild. The moment PVP happened, you lost hours upon hours of work,
because there was no refund for the boat. Yeah, that looks so good. Steal and ship it, exactly.
You say, oh, stop lying. Wait, hold up. What is this? Oh, stop lying. It worked perfectly
in Ashes? It did work perfectly because they didn't design it. They didn't make this. This video
is directly from ArcAge. This system is a one-to-one copy from ArcAge with no changes.
That's why it worked perfectly because it wasn't theirs.
Let's see here. What you sent me is at the end. This guy's down. Okay. Oh, yeah. No,
here's, here's an interesting thing. So this was on their, their Kickstarter. We are promises
you are to continue your open development process with you or backers on our website and Discord
channels. Finally, in the case that Ash's accretion does not launch, we promise to refund
all backers. Now, here's something that's really interesting about this, right? What
counts as a launch? Is them putting it on Steam a launch? Because they said it launched
into early access
are they going to technicality this
i'd like to wait and see
because that's a very specific wording and a very specific action
for a game that was not ready for steam
yeah
they technically
did launch it
into early access
Yep. Where did you see a legacy trust? I don't know anything about that.
I'll have to look into it. I don't know if that's why they rushed the steam release,
but I'm going to be real with you.
This is very specific wording that says does not launch.
We promised to refund all backers and this is technically a launch.
So I'd be,
I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I think it's very,
very likely that Kickstarter backers do not get a refund.
I think it's very likely, very, very likely.
Yep.
So, let's go pull up the actual page for this,
and go check it out.
Let's see if there's anything else you can find with that.
Let's see.
Dear God.
Wrists and challenges, promise the backers.
That's it.
Yep. There's nothing else on here. That's it. Yeah. This is No Man's Sky vibes for sure.
No. No Man's Sky is a very different thing when it first launched. No Man's Sky has
redeemed the shit out of itself, I think. They didn't have the money even if they
wanted to. You say that. You say they don't have the money if they even wanted to,
but I'm going to be real with you. They would have the money if they didn't mismanage
the show to this team, right? They would have. And, and I mean that very sincerely. Like we've
looked at their team distribution. This does not make a game. Having nine QA staff does not allow
you to have a live service game. Having no moderation does not allow you to have a live service
game. That's not it. That's not how it works. What is this paradox gaming thing?
The undisclosed investor behind it in tripped studios as the creation of exploded on a Kickstarter.
There we go.
The project is being funded by myself currently.
This is going to be a bigger game content wise than Crowfall and our budget and funding reflects that.
Most software development banks will not leverage as they don't like that kind of risk.
Usually, outside funds are raised through venture capitalists because they risk oriented.
However, it isn't something I have done.
This is exactly why I got into this game in the first place.
I'm funding the projects, no investors are bored to answer to, no publishers to appease.
This is it.
Where's the board?
What board, man?
It's a powerful reassurance, a promise to ask the creation, it's free from the compromise
that came with corporate publishers or investor pressure.
I would rather close shop than be owned by a publisher.
Always. Always.
Filing sleeve unanswered questions. Let's see here.
Intrepid studios via stock purchase agreement sold another 53 shares of preferred
stock of 5.3% share for a total of 2.2 million,
bringing yaya legacy of trust ownership to 9.7%.
9.7% doesn't mean that they have any control though.
Hermanus, acting as trustee of the IA Legacy Trust, filed a lawsuit in San Diego Superior
Court against Intrepid Studios.
In this lawsuit, Hermanus alleges he was denied access to the financial books and records
of Intrepid Studios, including but not limited to a list of shareholders, meeting minutes
for all meetings of the previous three years, statements of cash flow, balance sheets,
and all bank statements for the preceding three years.
You have to provide that to your investors.
The finalings leave unanswered questions such as why didn't Intrepid Studios not
use the Kickstarter money to pay off their million dollar initial debt.
Why do they like to make no payments to the IAO legacy trust,
allowing for the full 4.4% conversion? That makes no sense.
Why did a company that claims transparent development not allow
Caramanus to see the records of the company? I agree with this.
I super agree with this. That's not an optional thing.
If you have investors, you have to show them that there's legal requirements
to the shit. There's a reason we don't have any investors. Yeah.
Do you believe it was the board or some kind of rug pole?
So I spoke to an employee. I have a lot of eyes to a lot of people that
work there, right? Like, I've been playing it for years. I was the top streamer for the
game for ages, right? Like I'm the dude that plays ashes. And I have been for a long time.
We run one of the largest communities in the entire game, right? So talking to all the
devs, I went through and I was like, yo, do you know anything about this shit? One of
them responded to me and he's like, you didn't hear the ship from me. So I can't
give you the source, which means take this ship with a grain of salt. Even though
I know the person, even though I trust what they're saying, they said there
There was a board that was implemented six months ago and everything has gone downhill
since then.
As a player, we'd never know that.
The only reason I know it is because I was talking to a dude that works there.
That's it.
And I think that sucks, dude.
I think that's actually shit because that as a player, as a consumer, that would change
my entire visual of the company, would change the whole way that I feel about
the game and about the company.
If I had known that, I wouldn't have played this phase.
If I had known that, I wouldn't have played this phase at all.
probably couldn't tell you six months ago. I have no idea to be real with you.
If that dude is in there and he's worried about getting fired,
I wouldn't say shit either. I get it in this job market. Got it.
Understood. No problems there. Now that everything's fall apart.
He's got nothing to lose. Who gives a shit? Right? Yeah.
So what I want to know at this point is why,
why did they create a board? If that,
if that's true, if he was telling the truth,
and I have no reason to believe he's lying, right? Yeah.
So, like, why?
Why was that necessary?
And we've not been given the full story.
The only time that we have ever been told publicly that there was a board is Stephen himself
saying, I lost control of the company to the board.
Bro, what board?
It's insane.
It's insane.
Now, to understand something, three days before this happened, I want to show you
the message that I sent to both Steven and Margaret.
I'm going to find one of them that I can show you.
There's a lot of bombastic language in this shit.
I was pissed.
Did you get a reply?
A reply?
From Margaret?
Yes, I did.
And I was very not happy about it.
so that I quit the game entirely three days ago,
four days at this point and left the conversation with them
and left the official discord and told the community
would no longer be playing the game.
Yep. She said it's over and she resigned.
Four days prior to that, we had this conversation.
I'm trying to find all the chats for this.
Oh, you know what? I put it in our moderation channel.
I showed it to the whole mod team
because I was like, this is just,
I'm so done with this shit.
Yeah, here we go.
I can find this one.
Where is this?
I'm going to read through this to make sure this is the right one.
Ah, yeah. So this is it.
Yes, this is from Margaret to me.
He said, I can see how deeply disappointed you are and I understand why this moment feels like a breaking point.
You've stood up for us publicly, you put your own credibility in the line because you believed in what we were building,
losing that faith hurts, and I don't take that lightly.
To be transparent about what happened on our end, we investigate the reports you and others submitted.
The messages and question occurred within a very short window, roughly a 15-minute span,
and evolved a handful of posts, some of which the language used was inappropriate and unacceptable.
acceptable. Our current moderation framework does not always move directly to a permanent
ban for first time offenses of this nature. In many cases we issue warnings first. With
the expectation that the behavior can improve, if it doesn't, we escalate. This was for
a person that was claiming that they were part of a group that organized my swatting
last year and was trying to tell everyone that I sexually abused the animals that
are rescued. And for another person who was trying to organize groups on the
server to, quote, kill the LGBT people.
That's who they're defending here to be clear.
Those are the ones that they're defending and saying that we're not going to
move to a ban. This is why I quit the game.
To give you full context, that approach isn't about minimizing harm.
It's about giving people a chance to course correct before we move to
irreversible actions.
Those are the ones that don't want to do irreversible actions on.
Cool.
It's imperfect and it doesn't always align with how quickly or firmly others would like or expect this to act.
I also want to acknowledge the timeline of frustration. It took them eight days to respond to that report.
To me, it took them 15 days to do it for other people. Some of them never got an answer, even after 20 days.
Yeah, our team is small. We work tickets in the order that they are received and we do our due diligence on each one.
That means response time can feel slow, especially when you're expecting this live on on stream in front of your audience
I know we're doing our best doesn't erase that experience
It probably takes that long because out of your 206 person team you have seven people on media and communication
That might be the problem
It may also be a problem that you have so many bugs in the game because you only have nine people on quality assurance
And you have 101 in Arts and Design and 65 in Engineering.
You may have over-indexed some of these jobs.
Just going to put that out there.
Maybe a little bit.
What is changing?
We're actively building a much stronger chat filter
and reporting pipeline.
A year ago, a year ago, I went to the dev team
and I said the same problems that we saw today,
the same problems in this phase with moderation.
I brought that to them and they said they were actively working on it.
I said you guys should add a slash report feature to the game so people can report report players in game and they said
We're gonna add that it was a year ago
This response is the same as it was in a year ago. They never did that at all
whatsoever
And I talked about this a lot throughout this phase. I was like they just didn't do this and they still said
Oh, we're just gonna do it later. We're gonna do it. We're working on it
Bro adding a report feature your game is easiest shit. I can add that shit to a Minecraft server in five seconds
What the hell are you doing? You already have a slash bug. You already have a framework for it
Do it
Should have just added that shit
The only way to report a player is you had to go to the support staff website the support website, which is a separate login
log into that one
Take a screenshot of what the person said in game and then put it up in there and then send the report
Which is insane?
That doesn't make any sense
That's a shitload of friction for a player to just report another guy who's saying hate speech in your video game slash report needs to exist
It's not that hard
So they're actively building a much stronger chat filter their current chat filters the one they've had the whole time
It didn't filter out guild it didn't filter out citizen chat citizen chat is an open chat
Anyone that lives in the town not just your guildies not just your friends right those two
Those two and that's it the rest of them like global chat and shout were filtered in this way
But they did an exact match filter meaning if you said simple it would filter out the word simp
Which makes no goddamn sense. They had this scunthorpe problem
They didn't even do a good filter and if you put a space in it it wouldn't filter any of it
There was no regex. It was literally an exact one-to-one match
And that's ridiculous dude. Yeah completely ridiculous. The basement one was really funny. You couldn't say basement couldn't say fireball
Do you know that couldn't say fireball or eyeball?
because ebal is a rude term in another language. I don't even know what it
wanted to do this. So yeah, ridiculous. Actually ridiculous, to be honest with you.
Yep, I don't even know what language that one's for. Yeah. So what is change? We're
actively building a much stronger chat filter. The system will prevent many of
the worst messages from ever being posted. Okay. And will automatically surface
violations to CS for action. It's part of a broader effort to make Vera
a place that doesn't rely solely on human moderation after harm has occurred.
But I also understand if that's not fast enough or not the outcome you hoped for, I just
want you to know this wasn't indifference.
It wasn't us choosing bad behavior of the community.
It was us applying a framework that's still evolving in a game that's very much in motion.
Whether or not you choose to stay with us, I respect the honesty you brought to this
conversation and I'm genuinely sorry that we reached a place where you felt unheard
and unsupported.
If you truly wish to part ways with the Creator program, let us know and we'll
respect that decision.
It's not like we have a choice now, but I want you to know sincerely, we love for you to stay.
Your voice mattered here and still does.
It didn't.
And the reason why I say it didn't is because for a year I was telling them the exact things
that I told them in this message chain.
The exact problems with the moderation, the exact problems with the direction of
the studio, the exact problems that we saw today that killed the game.
That's the issue.
Brought all of this up to them for an entire year.
They didn't do shit.
early 2025 game was golden. It was great. Everything from there. Shit show. Why is everything saying
board? What do you mean everything saying board? Oh, because we have no idea what that board is.
That just came out of nowhere, dude. Steven's like, the game got away from me. The board took it away
for me. And it's like, what board, dude? Was it ever desert ever finished? Yes, it was.
Oh, dude, what are you talking about? Are you just like spouting nonsense? Let me see what
your message is. Oh, you're talking about narc and you think that narc was correct. Okay,
Okay, so no, the desert was 100% finished.
In fact, at the time that Narc released his video,
it was already finished.
You should have watched my video on it
that showed that Narc was full of shit.
Yeah, no, it was 100% finished.
Yes, it was.
Yeah, no, I played it a lot, dude.
My guy is not finished.
What part of it is not finished?
You can't just say wrong.
Let's have a normal conversation.
Arden, which part of it do you think
is not actually finished?
Underground?
What underground?
The dungeon?
there's no dungeon in that zone
so you're saying that the desert's not finished because one dungeon that you
wanted to have in the game was not finished
that's like saying this isn't an apple because there's no stem on it dude
are you okay
but that's not
that doesn't make any sense man
you know
No, that zone was great.
Yeah.
You can check your all my words in one thing, probably because you're talking in three word sentences
and just spamming random, random bullshit.
So have a normal conversation.
Say the whole word.
You're not paying for words.
So say the whole sentence with all of your words, not three words at a time.
Whole thing.
The poppies weren't finished.
That doesn't make any sense.
That's not a whole, that's not a whole conversation, but the poppies weren't finished.
Doesn't describe anything at all.
That's like saying game broke.
Say the whole thing.
I'll give you the time to write the whole thing. Game was broke, dumbass. See? This is, this is what I'm talking about. Ardun, say the whole thing, dude. Use all of your words. This isn't, you're not paying per word, you're not paying per letter. This isn't tick-tock, you're not on a time limit. Use your words.
Communicate the whole thought
The game was not done. No, we're talking about the problem
You had with the desert where you said the desert wasn't finished and I said it was finished because if you actually flew around it
It had nodes and information all over it and tons of models and all the bosses and everything like that. We went there all the time
So what wasn't finished?
Be specific and explain yourself stop typing in three word sentences or I'll put you in the corner
You can do this. I believe in you
Deny the TikTok generation. Here look. Jingle, jingle. Give me a full sentence.
Not three words. Can you do it? Can you do it? You still can't do it, can you?
Damn it, dude. I'm literally giving you the whole floor. I'm giving you the whole
thing, man. Man's lost. The desert is not finished, even no 23W. I need you to say
you're full. What is not finished? Not the desert is not finished. What about the desert
isn't finished to you? It's still not done. Come on, man, you don't know how to talk.
It has bugs.
The acacia?
No, dude, again, stop.
Okay.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to time you out for 10 minutes.
I'm going to time you out for 10 minutes because you're just diarrhea of the mouthing
right now.
I need you to sit down with notepad during this 10-minute stint in which you're not
allowed to talk in my chat.
You need to write into notepad your whole thought, not it broken.
Acacia. Poppy's not finished. It has bugs. Tell me what is wrong. With your whole words,
you are now stuck in the corner for 10 minutes. I don't even care if you use grok to do it
at this point. You need to learn to communicate your whole thought. Not micro thoughts that
are like half formed. The whole thing. I'll see you in 10 minutes. And when you get
back at me with the whole thing. I want to paragraph, dude. I want to not three
words. I want to paragraph of your actual gripe about the game and we can
actually talk about that. Wild, dude.
That's like I'm giving him homework, man.
Yeah, chatter is speaking in microplastics. Exactly.
Unnecessary. So yeah,
like I'll give you an example of saying the whole thought. You ready for
this? You want to see the whole thought? Let me show you. We're gonna go on steam.
I'm gonna pull the game up. I'm gonna say view your review. Behold, speaking with
your whole brain, not in microplastics. The whole brain, just list out
how you feel, not just, it's bad. It tells nobody anything. You've conveyed
no information. Yeah. What just happened? I just got here. Just I find this thing that
keeps happening where people just go, it's bad. You're wrong. You're wrong. It's bad.
I go, okay, how am I wrong? How is it bad? And they go, it's bad. You're wrong. And
like, that's the only thing they can say. And that's all that guy was saying. He
was just speaking in tiny little phrases that give no information. All right, we
ads. We're gonna wait in the ads. I don't think they are, though, Tix. I have no idea.
Man represents the board, yes.
It's bad. You're wrong. Love you guys. Exactly.
Is the board like two people? The thing is, we don't know who the board is. We know who
their chief financial advisor and their CEO are and secretary. That's it. Like that's the only
thing that we know. We don't know shit about this board, right? They just came out of nowhere.
And I think it's awful to be honest with you.
It's poorly made, but it works. What is this?
You know, look at this.
I am the board. Yeah.
That's funny as hell, dude. Oh my god.
What is this?
Yeah what the hell is this man?
This Borreco Karen thing is freaking me out too.
Borreco. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, no clue. Waiting on these ads still. This
good guess this time you high-tail it out of there. I know, right? The board of composes
of, yeah. No, I'm not going to show that document. It has people's addresses on
I showed that information earlier. It is just Stephen and John Moore. I don't know if they're
married, right? I don't know if that's the case. But, um, yeah, that's not the board. So you'll
see it. Let me, let me actually grab this real quick. I'm going to, I'm going to screenshot
this again. I'm going to cut out their addresses again, because I don't, I don't think
that's a good thing to post people's addresses like this. I think it's a really bad thing,
actually. Um, we'll grab this. I'm going to remove the officer addresses here. And I'll
I'll show you this document. So this is part of that document.
And it's, it says that the chief executive officer and secretary is Stephen
Sharif and the chief financial officer is John Moore. This is not the board.
This is not the board to be clear. This is not what the board is.
This is their officers of the corporation.
There is no board listed on this.
Do you understand? We don't know who the board are.
That doesn't make any sense. That's a CEO and CFO, not the board.
Correct. So anyone claiming this is the board, that's not the board. That's not what that is.
I think it's people misunderstanding corporate infrastructure or corporate structuring.
Yeah, that's not what that is. You are the intrepid now. Hello, Kronos.
How would we find out the board? We wouldn't. They'd have to disclose it, which they should.
Yeah. Everyone is saying this game is a scam. Do you think the same? I think that it was
incredibly mismanaged and I think that they implemented this board or whatever the hell
all this is and that seems really suspicious, dude.
Badly so.
And I'll give you an example of why I feel that way.
I don't like the word scam for like this
because that kind of shows intent.
I haven't seen intent on this, but look at this, man.
Look at the distribution of employee jobs.
You have 101 people in arts and design.
You have 65 in engineering out of 206 employees.
You have nine in quality assurance.
You have nine in QA my dude. This is super backwards. This is mismanaged as shit.
The only thing that looks like a scam to me is them putting it on Steam.
That's the only thing that looks like a scam to me.
And the reason why is because they stated on their Kickstarter that if the game didn't launch, they would be refunding backers.
Does a launch on steam in early access count?
Because there was no stipulations on what counted as a launch.
Technically, it has launched.
And that's the only thing that looks like a scam to me.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Class section lawsuit.
What would you sue?
A ghost?
Like who owns the company?
I don't know.
But the debt is currently owned by someone named Karen named Karen Borreco
So Karen Borreco is a
co-founder of Vema
Which is a company that sold dietary supplements the company was shut down in 2015 by the FTC
For engaging in deceptive practices and being a pyramid scheme
So they own the debts of ashes of creation now somehow
That seems wrong. Yeah, that's real weird dude. Yeah
Yeah, so I don't know anything about that shit
You don't like that Steven looks like your father slightly. That sounds like something you should
talk to your therapist about. Good luck. That's the wrong section. There's a director's section,
and under it it says zero vacancies under that. You're talking about directors. We're not talking
about directors either. So you're talking about, let me pull this up with so many tabs and shit open.
You're talking about this, right, for the officer section?
Under directors, you have this as well, the board of directors.
This is the one you're talking about, right?
That may not be the same board either because it may not actually be a board of directors.
I don't know.
All we know is that they have never brought up a board before.
Their company information does not display a board and according to one employee that
I spoke to there was a board that was implemented six months ago and the game has gone downhill since
That's it
That's all we know
Yeah, Karen and is bored and all right
It's all to Lee likes to face dancers did pretty much the red is so on right now you laugh sitting trepid
How many what is this? Oh, yeah, no, it's done
Could be a VC board if Steven took a big loan up. That's what I'm wondering. The loan should have only been I believe
9.6% of their overall stock for the VC thing. They were talking about that earlier. Something like 9.6
So less than 10%
The real corpus structure tarmac you meaning this seems like a tarmac mean is a tarmac mean
Looking oh shit you figured it out. Oh
Oh, shit
We just have to find canary mr. Burns
Canary and burns guys who was it above Steven
It's gonna find him dude gotta find him yeah, we'll get whoever that's
That's Karen right there. That's who it is. We figured it out. That's the one
You just go to that ridiculous dude
Yeah, so like to be real of you dude, this is what it looks like to me
And I'm just kind of kind of take all my thoughts and put it into like one go
It seems like they had a really good run
For a while
It seems like they had a really good run a really good design strategy really good development strategy for the game
That continued up until about March of 2025
After March of 2025, everything went downhill. The developers stopped engaging with the players
as much. Their design philosophy started going out the window. They lost track completely of
what they were doing. Moderation fell off of a cliff. They stopped communicating anything,
and supposedly during that time period, a board was formed. Whether that is the cause or not,
I don't know. But everything at that point on went to shit. And it has been shit since,
which is why I wrote up this gigantic negative review for the game on January 9th and then edited
it on January 10th. And why I quit the game three days ago, four days ago, actually now,
because of bad management and bad moderation in the game. Because the developers fully informed,
protected people saying horrific things in their game.
And that was fully informed to both Steven and Margaret
in a DM conversation with them.
They knew exactly what was going on
and decided not to ban people.
So that's why I quit the game.
And I haven't touched it since.
I actually uninstalled it four days ago.
And you're the best thing for them
as a big time early supporter.
I have been supporting the game since 2021.
I have combated misinformation about it the whole time and I have called
them on their shit for the last entire year because the game has had serious
problems since then during this last phase, it was great in the beginning.
There were a lot of changes for early game questing that felt awesome.
Once you got past that, you found that they had actually fixed nothing
beyond that, which is incredibly bad.
They knew as dying and didn't care.
Hence no bands.
No, I think they honestly believed the things they were saying.
I think it is easy to attribute their actions to malice when it comes to not banning shitheads
like that.
I think it is more likely that they had an idealized vision of what moderation in a
video game is and thought that they could rehabilitate someone that is in their chat
spamming praises for Hitler, which is what they were doing, right?
can't redeem that person. That is not a redeemable person. You have to cut your
losses and be like, that'll screw up our community. Get rid of it. You think NARC
is a thousand percent redeemed? I disagree. I think NARC made a video a long
while back about the desert in which he displayed a section of the desert that
wasn't finished and claimed that the desert was that the entire way through.
And it was wrong. And I put a video out about it showing that it was wrong. I
know that you want to be like, NARC was right, NARC was right. But if
you actually looked at what he was claiming, he was not correct.
He was correct in that the game was going in the wrong direction.
He was not correct with his specific claims about the desert and the bullshit.
There he over embellished and he shouldn't have done that,
which is why I called him on it.
Sounds like other companies that would protect problematic players that
spend a lot of money. Yeah. Yep.
He was right, bro. The dinosaur. What was he right about?
Turtle Pop, because I'm going to tell you right now,
it's not about dying in a hill. Like I'm telling you right now,
I disagree with you.
We can disagree with each other and be normal human beings.
But I'd like to understand what do you think he was correct about?
Because Narc was right, doesn't say anything.
What do you think he was right about?
Narc was also complaints about the dev team and life of progress on the systems.
I agree with him on that entirely.
So yep, I agree with him on that.
Now in 2025 early, I didn't at all because the game is going in the right
direction then.
It fell off at around 20, 25 March is when things started going wrong.
Can ashes be brought back and revived by another company?
Doubtful.
He was right about the game going downhill.
He made that claim at the time when it was its best.
So I disagree with that legitimately.
So like the game was at its heyday.
It was at its, at its best, the fastest development, the fastest movement,
the most communication from the developers.
The days that he made that claim was when it was in its peak form.
It died months after that.
It started to go downhill months after that.
Yeah.
Phase 2.5 was bad.
That was like 10 months ago.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Back to doing that eventually.
2025 was great until about March, April, somewhere there.
Tomorrow's news.
AOC purchase barrette gross.
Do you see parallels with Blizzard with the coming off?
Uh, rails and hard, hard to correct. No, that's a completely different thing.
Blizzard's kind of fall into the idea that they need to over monetize literally
everything to squeeze as much money out of people that are still supporting them
as possible, which is pretty common among major, like AAAs, man.
This just screams mismanagement.
This screams, I wanted to make an arcade private server and it got away from
me. That's what it's starting to look like to me.
And it just, it just fell off the rails.
Basically didn't know what they were doing and spent a lot of money doing
bullshit.
In-game message from the devs. What is this?
Sorry, all we did are best devs. We truly did our best out of our control. You guys are incredible and keep on keeping on. That's good
That's nice. I like seeing it. Servers are still on. Yeah
Back to Eve soon, I'm not gonna be playing Eve. No, that's pay-to-win. I don't want to play that pay-to-win game ever in my life again
Yeah
Yeah, there was a game in a company and mismanaged and killed it. It's not a scam. I think it's
You know what I you know, I think it is that bothers me about that
I think the reason it bothers me is because you're not having a conversation when you scream that
It is not a scam. It's just a horribly mismanaged piece of shit
Like it was mismanaged into the ground their intention was to make a game
They tried to and they just didn't know what the hell they were doing and they made a bunch of stupid ass mistakes as a result of this
even when people were telling them that they were mistakes, and they drove it into the ground.
Yeah, scams are deliberate. This is just mismanagement. This is just dumb. Does that make sense?
It's attributing ignorance as if it was malice.
At this point, the only move I'm going to play is high tail. Fair. Yeah, super fair.
Can you explain how Ash's creator program worked with the codes? Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
So the way that the creator program works, let me go pull this up.
We'll go dump this.
The way the creator program works is, I draw on this, there we go.
Let me make some layers, do the thing, make it large.
Please dump this in here, do that.
It's not like it matters now, it's gone.
Basically, anyone who signed up using your link,
Actually, let's preface this, I'll explain what it is and why I thought it was good.
In EVE online, if you built a massive corporation or alliance in EVE, it was a lot of work,
a massive, massive amount of work to do this.
It was very, very hard to maintain that.
It was like having a second job.
In fact, it was effectively a second job.
And I did that for thousands of people.
It was very difficult and took a lot of effort for me every day. Yeah, you still play Eve
since 2003. I was the leader of Strybug Clade. You're in Goon Swarm? I used to be Goon Swarm.
Battle in the 6VDT. Went off, formed Strybug Clade. We built Potschman. It's cool. So
that was my alliance. I was a Strybug Kibernaut subclade was my core, inside of the alliance.
And I was the alliance lead. So a lot of work, massive amount of goddamn work,
Right wormhole nerds, right?
With all of that in mind, doing all that shit,
this is a ton of work and you don't get paid for it.
There is no monetization that will help you with this.
The only way you can do that is with RMT
and then you get banned from the game.
So with Ashes, they did a sign up system.
And the way that the sign up system worked
was basically if you got a, let's say one person signed up,
if they stayed in the video game,
you got 15% of their subscription
for as long as they stayed subbed.
That was the goal,
which means as a content creator,
as a guild leader, as an alliance leader,
you were financially compensated
for creating good content
inside of a social sandbox game,
which is a brilliant move.
That is very, very smart to do
because then you could actually make a job
out of making cool shit in the video game
and making an experience for people,
you get to be a paid dungeon master.
That is a really good system.
Like a really good system
and it'll never see the light of day now.
This is, that's never gonna happen now.
Yeah.
Roblox did that?
No, they did it very differently.
They did it very differently.
This would not be like into an interim currency
and then sell the interim currency
or not a stupid shit, it just goes direct to money.
Yeah, it's a pretty compelling system,
especially when you're creating content like that.
It is an interesting idea.
This never saw the light of day.
I have received $0 to be clear.
I was never financially compensated by Ashes of Creation.
I was never paid by the development team.
I just believed in the game, legitimately so.
And like, I'll never see any money from that.
Sucks is what it is, right?
Say get over by Wells, now it sucks for what?
Oh, you're taking my leave.
No, I think, I don't think Eve is worth hopping into
for me, because I don't like pay to win.
If you're fine with pay-to-win systems inside of your social sandbox,
you're cool. Go play it. It's great. It's a phenomenal game.
And that it was put you ahead of other content creators for what?
Like for saying that you say,
guess who's an ARC was right along? No, I think that's kind of like weird,
like weird to state. I think Nark lied about the desert.
I think he was correct that the dev team was going in the wrong direction.
But at the time that he made those statements was when Ash's,
would as was at its peak, doing its best.
It fell apart like six months after he did that.
It started to go the wrong direction like six months later.
For reasons that made no sense.
He was not a prophet.
He was just making content at the time and didn't like the direction of the
game at a time where most of us liked the direction of the game.
Yeah.
It's not no stradamus shit, you know, I bet some people are going to
ask for apologies for convincing them to get in the game.
Cool. Like, I don't know why. I never convinced anyone to get into the game.
The statement that I always said to every single person that came in here, they were like,
hey, should I buy this game? I go, do you like social sandboxes? If you like social sandboxes,
and you're okay with a game that is not finished yet, and will have a lot of bugs,
and your character's going to get wiped, this might be for you. Every time. And there's a
very explicit reason why I say that, and why I say every time I can't make that decision
for you no matter what game I ever play is because I'm not going to tell you to buy something
because that doesn't make sense. You should be making that decision. Yeah.
Social sandbox? It was a social sandbox. Yeah, you said that all the time. Exactly.
NARC saw the signs that were in the earlier the most. The problem that I have with that
statement is if NARC saw those signs, then why did he lie about the desert?
because he did lie about the desert.
He went to the very bottom right portion of the desert where it was unfinished at a phase where that node plug wasn't implemented yet,
and then did a 360 there and said the desert looks like this completely.
It's empty.
And it wasn't true.
Like he straight up lied about that, man.
And you have to be honest about that.
So why did he lie about that then?
If he saw the signs, if he saw the signs, why did he lie about that?
that. He didn't lie, it was just a little disingenuous. No, that's called a lie.
I think that's you being disingenuous. Call it for what it is. That's a lie.
Yeah, he lied for content. Like, I get it. I understand that, but that's still a lie, man.
Be honest.
Yeah, it's not a lie. It's just not telling the truth.
Like, come on, dude. Ridiculous.
That sounds like good friends ask me if they should get Final Fantasy 14.
I tell them if you're okay with grinding a lot in quests to get good at PvE content,
be community-driven, then absolutely, yeah.
And I think that's the honest way to do it, man.
Like, tell people this is what you might be getting into.
Is that something for you?
Because if it is, cool.
And if it's not, cool, right?
Yeah, future politician in the chat, my dude.
What is this?
the devil aren't getting paid for their their last two weeks of work and there's
no payroll do we have proof of that because I've heard that the devs aren't
getting paid but there's no payroll for them
the desert guy come back with a full thought also to DS please I've not
seen a full thought from the desert guy after I jingle jangled the keys and
told them that he had to speak in sentences longer than three words and
then timed him out for 10 minutes so he could go write his essay about it he
never came back as far as I can see. Yeah. Oh, if they're not getting paid, that's completely
fucked. I agree with you. That's completely insane. No payroll or benefits. Do we have
proof of that? Does anyone have proof of this? There's a lot of hearsay and it's
really easy to bullshit. I'd like to see documents. Does California law allow that?
California, wow, will eat you alive.
34 just said it after an employee sent him a letter.
I would take any of that with a grain of salt.
I'm even taking the grain of salt, even though I talk to, like I talk to an employee that
we have known this whole time.
And that employee said that they implemented a board six months ago, but
there's no public information about this.
And that's why I said before it, I got this from an employee that I know
as an employee, but you can't take it because it doesn't make sense until they have official
messaging about this. It is an inside source. And what do we know about inside sources? It
means it was probably pulled out of an ass, right? It was inside of an ass and got pulled
out. So like, just yeah, it's gossip. It's gossip that we have it in writing. It's got
to be in writing even though I believe them, even though I know that they're an employee,
gossip till it's in writing. Yeah. What is this? What is this video? Video unavailable.
Very cool.
Tweet share by Winky, skip to one minute.
What is this?
Okay, they're making the claim
that payroll cannot be processed.
payroll cannot be processed is what they're saying.
We still don't have anything in any information there
about that all.
Yeah, there's no official information about this.
So we needed an actual official information.
New fable game, I'm really excited for that action.
Super excited for that.
Yeah, that's all you could find exactly.
And this is what I'm saying, dude.
Like, I know everyone's like,
oh, but it's the inside source, the inside scoop.
I have that as well.
Talk to employees myself, I'm not believing shit
till we get in writing, we have to see it.
Wait time is bugged?
No, I just haven't hit the button yet.
I love how people jump to conclusions.
Yeah, that's why I'm not gonna jump to conclusions.
I think what they've done is shit.
I think that the game is shit.
I've made that very public since January 9th.
Like very, very much so.
Hey, it looks great. Yeah. Like very obviously, you know,
when I heard about Ash's damn shame, it's ridiculous, dude.
It's not like, it's not like they wouldn't know.
You know what really pisses me off?
Honestly, you know what actually pisses me off is four days ago when I
talked to Steven Sharif and Margaret, right?
One of the things that we reported up through that was a guy that was
going around our server for days.
He did this for like two weeks saying that he wanted to get groups
together to go kill LGBT people on our server.
This is what this guy was doing.
That's all he was doing and just spouting this in global all the time.
One of the conversations I had with them was to report this dude up.
And their response to that was that they're not going to ban people
like this.
They're going to course correct them with warnings to try to
basically rehabilitate them.
If that is their actual stance on people saying stuff like that, it makes it even more insane
because the statements today is that Stephen Sharif has a husband.
Why would you protect that in your video game if that is the case?
I'm just like
What what that's even more insane like well, it's like directly I
My flabber is gassed dude like there's no this doesn't make any goddamn sense
It makes no sense
It makes no sense
Yeah, they have bigger problems. Don't worry. Did you know?
Yeah, it makes no sense, dude.
Ash's creation pisses me off more than overcooked, too.
What?
You think the husband part is a meme due to Reddit post?
There have been people saying that that's his husband since nine years ago.
I don't know if that's true.
I have no idea.
But that is the claim, and it's been that way for nine years.
Yeah, that he is married to John, who is the CFO for the company.
So, it's not a new claim. It's not out of nowhere. This has been around since
forever. Yeah. Most obvious right pull-a-word. Honestly, the only part of that that I
can agree with, man, is going to steam at this time period made no sense. And now
it kind of does make sense. And the reason why it kind of does make sense to
may is because of their Kickstarter. Let me pull this up.
I'm gonna go grab this. We're gonna go to the ashes creation
Kickstarter. We're gonna go all the way to the bottom. And
there's something at the very bottom of this. It says, in
case that ashes of creation does not launch, we promise to
refund all backers in full. Does a early access launch on
steam count as a launch thus absolving them of refunding backers in technicality
that's why I would agree with you on the rugpole state that's why I would agree
with that. Because that looks sketchy as shit because this was not ready for steam. This
was not ready for steam at all. Can you reboot the Minecraft server? Sure, man. I didn't realize
it with that. My bad. Let me fix that. Wasn't there a decision about the Chronicles of
Allerius game trials? I have no idea. I have no idea about that, dude. Alright,
him servers backup man.
Rob Paul's a refellety?
I have no idea.
Thankfully I've never gotten into financial crime so I'm not very well versed in that.
Yeah.
Has been launched on Steam?
It hasn't been released though.
Yes, but it doesn't say that.
It says in case that Ashes of Creation does not launch.
Doesn't say release, says launch.
Steam is technically a launch, but doesn't count.
It appears launching early access can count as launch as there are certain requirements are met.
Let's go see what the certain requirements are.
Grab that.
Navigating early access, legal and practical considerations.
Do-do-do-do-do launch.
Development does not need to be in final stages by the time you launch in early access.
Launch. There's that word launch.
Community engagement feedback is good.
Reading full launch.
Avoiding any promises regarding full launch until you're certain there will be one.
I'm telling you, dude, it's not looking good.
That's not looking good.
I get it once it's playable and it technically launched.
I disagree with that.
I'm gonna be real.
I think launching on Steam is the launch.
I think they will count that as a launch
to try and stop refunding Kickstarter backers.
I find it very doubtful that they'll refund.
Very doubtful.
Yeah.
Kickstarter will have to agree
It's a launcher not Kickstarter will steam will too.
Yeah.
The one it's going to come down to is it doesn't matter who agrees to what it's
going to come down to a court case if it happens.
Nobody on Twitter is going to solve that, right?
Glad you skipped AOC.
I felt something that was off from the start.
I didn't, I knew that there was development problems.
I knew there was stuff that sucked.
I have 3000 hours of gameplay and I enjoyed my time in it.
I will say that since March of 2025, it went to the shitter.
And I was very public about that every time. It's why I quit the first time. It's why I quit the second time
Like that's it and I've been super public about that if like games in a shithole. What are you doing?
There's a game dead dead games dead dead dude
Dunja dunzo
Steam is likely to put out refunds regardless though might take a few weeks
Yeah, steams got to turn that ship and find out what the hell's going on. They're not gonna react right away
I heard of the Warnack letter as well.
I did.
They, they invoked that.
So that means that they're going to be firing everyone and how do they not do payroll?
It's because I believe you get 60 days, right?
Like, you're supposed to give 60 days of, of pay for Warnack, don't you?
So like, they can't, if they can't even do payroll this time, then what the hell?
60 days paid work. So that means they have to give 60 days notice to every single employee.
Assets are frozen probably. I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the
case at all. How do we get refunds if we purchase an alpha one before steam? We don't.
We don't, we don't. Yeah. I paid in 2021, I paid $375. That was my buy-in five years
ago. Have a meme chat seems a bit sad. I mean, I'm going to be honest with you. It's fine
to rage about this. There's nothing wrong with raging about it. Just be real, right?
Be mad about stuff that's real, stuff that you can prove.
That's all it matters.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, $375.
That's not a joke.
Here, I'll pull it up.
Grab this.
That was my purchase.
June 4th, 2021 at 548 UTC over Stripe for $375.
And I got all of this shit. Let me show you. Although it listed all as $1, which is kind of weird.
This is what it gave me back in the day.
And I never actually got any of these.
I never got the Geyser glider, never got the Maelstrom's crown, the mail of Favons Fury, the Coral Corsair, Boundless Basin, Embers never got implemented.
implemented. Steward of pauldrons never happened. Prior to ember pack never
happened. Beta two never happened. Beta one never happened. Alpha two did happen.
And my character name reservation actually never happened either. In fact,
every phase someone would steal my character's name and that I have to go
to Steven and he would manually unlock it for me by taking it back.
Every single phase name reservation never worked.
So that was cool.
Yeah, so nothing on this list worked except for this kind of
Like I said shit show dude
Yeah, we never got our flying ferrets either. That's true
Get road pulled. I know right dude. I honestly think that the steam the steam move was the scam
I think that I think that feels like a scam to me legitimately because it shows intent
Launching on Steam feels that way and it feels, it feels to me like they did that to get around their promise in Kickstarter.
Because their Kickstarter promise was to refund everyone if the game didn't launch.
And I feel like launching on Steam counts as a launch.
It feels like it takes, it feels like winning on a technicality.
Yeah.
Was the Steam launch 60 days ago? No, but the company doesn't close until 60 days from now.
Yeah.
Yeah. Launched on steam December 11th, 2025. That was not six months ago. It was two months
ago. It was almost a month ago to be honest with you.
Since AOC was cooking you had sport fishing to block game. No, I'm going to do the right
thing as a dev and add in a unique fishing minigame that is not found in Orcage.
Do you have a source for this? What's up? What is this source? Hold up. No whispering of sources. What do you got? What do you got? What's your bullshit?
Don't you hold that on me?
The entire financial structure of the company making this game was a Ponzi scheme. He was taking out loans to pay off loans and essentially cycling his money.
When they defaulted on server cause, the government got involved.
Oh, let's see the claim.
Ashes of creation is a scam. Here's some evidence.
Interpret Studio is suspended by the FTB.
We're going to look into this.
Mayor didn't drink water yet? Mayor, go drink water.
Or else or I'll jingle the keys at you
Kickstarter lures and make a solid argument that an announcement isn't a launch it's not an announcement
It's a launch on steam so it makes me think that that would count as an actual launch
and I think that
It would likely be argued in court
that Kickstarter
the claim they made on Kickstarter of until it launches has been fulfilled by
doing that. It would have to be a court case. Does that make sense?
You look through all those lean documents, you're not a lawyer. I don't know
any of San. Any anything about this. So let's see. There's nothing suspicious
about Ash's creation. The difference is that now we can see in documentation
that something doesn't add up at all.
And what better way to see that than at the financial level?
Ashes creation suspended.
It has several liens, bank loans, and debts.
These are essentially outstanding debts to which company properties are linked liabilities.
This can simply include loans granted to companies or entities by which they have used guarantees,
their own or others to support it.
It's very common for these things to appear.
but it's striking to see the company has indeed received external financing.
So this is the debtor information for the file numbers for this.
I don't understand any of this, to be honest with you. I don't know that at all.
The worst of it is Intrepid seems to have recurring problems to the state of California.
Right now it's suspended by the FTB. This means the company is stripped of any power to operate.
Did they regain that?
Stephen seems to have used intrepidist collateral. I'm going to be real with you. I know nothing
about that side of business. One of the things that I did when I formed my corporation was
I took all of the shares and I ate them. And I threw away all of that shit, which
is why I made it an S corp. So there are no shares effectively other than me. I am
the corporation. And now I don't have any of these shitty problems. And as such,
I never looked into any of it because I don't ever want to deal with any of that because
it's stupid and it just leads to shit like this.
Yeah, I am the board.
Exactly.
I am the captain now.
Look at me.
It's the corporation.
It is.
I hate that shit.
So I got away with it immediately.
Depends on the scope of the business.
There.
I have employees just like a normal corporation.
We offer them benefits just like a normal corporation.
The difference is we don't have outstanding shares with anyone.
It's just me.
And that will never change.
I don't know how they're managing, but from experience they'll be using a DBA or some
other entity to get by.
I haven't checked 100%, but I think one of these suspensions coincides with when they
stopped selling skins, with the excuse that they're remodeling the store.
The funniest thing is has been active since then, months.
That's really weird.
Curiously, despite the company being suspended since May, they have now requested
reactivation. Last October 7th, here's the document.
You can read through this one sec.
Reservation owner is Robert Sue, reserved on behalf of John
Moore.
What?
Now that's super weird. So John Moore is the CFO and
supposedly Stevens husband.
Business entity type is corporation cooperative.
Suspended or forfeited entity number, was that one?
Intrepid Studios, Inc.
I'm posting this here because they'll probably ban me in the AAC group.
It's very strange because the company can have financial problems. You can be late with a payment,
a thousand things can happen to you. But to get to the point where the FTB suspends you,
it's a very long process and it happens due to recidivism.
It's a good word. Let me go see what recidivism means in this context.
The tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend, which means that they've done it over and over and over again.
If we look back at history, they were almost suspended on two other occasions.
Also last year, they were reported for not submitting annual accounts, which then makes
me suspect that it's not just lack of money anymore, but that it's a scam in every sense.
If we think about it now, that Alpha 2 is going to come out, and it's going to be
discovered that the game needs until 2090 to come out, the house of cards is going
to fall apart, and they're ready to run away.
see what happens. Interesting. Interesting. I don't understand anything about liens or
the debt system or any of that stuff. So that gets a bit over my head, right? Because that's
not my expertise area. The expertise area that I have is in an understanding development
process and understanding what is need to make it a game, right?
And with that in mind, their development team doesn't make any goddamn sense.
And we can see that here.
This is their total team and all the roles that are actually involved.
65 engineers, 101 artists and design and nine quality assurance.
How are you going to make this game?
How are you going to make this game?
You can't with a team built that way.
It is lopsided as shit.
Chronos call time.
What do you want to Chronos call?
What do you guys need?
What do you want Chronos to add to the conversation?
What is the more reasonable ratio for those roles?
Honestly, 20 to 30% QA generally.
Like that's generally where you're at.
You don't need 101 artists for what they are doing.
You need to have art design teams built out for environments, items, characters.
Those are kind of your three main ones in this case right now.
101 artists, that screams like a big bloated machine of artists.
It screams mismanagement to me.
Yeah.
1.5 QA per dev works best.
That's a good ratio.
I don't think it's a bad ratio at all.
generally want to have more, more QA than developers. That is
true. And QA are generally a cheaper role than a dev is. You
do need 101 artist rollout skins. I'm going to tell you right
now, as someone who bought in early, I never received any of
the skins that were owed to me. So I don't think that's true.
Have the devs been fleeing? Well, they're all going to flee in
two months time because they're all fired. So I think
Thereafter is legal expertise.
Chronos, as far as I know, knows copyright law.
So I don't know if that applies here.
He may be able to correct me on that.
But yeah.
It's artists and game designers.
It's arts and design.
But here's the problem, right?
If we actually look at everything
that's changed in Ash's creation of the last year,
what is the largest system that saw changes in Ash's
in the entire last year of development?
You have two of them.
Who here played the game and knows what they are?
There are two major changes that changed the game.
In terms of design,
it's professions and quests.
Combat didn't change.
Professions and quests.
Quests required them to make a bunch of new quests.
They managed to make all the quests up to about level 8
in most areas of the game.
That was it.
That was the big one for that.
In terms of the rest for professions, they added over 500 bloat items that had no gameplay value whatsoever.
They were simply bought off of a vendor, and then after you buy off the vendor, you use it in the craft, and it does nothing for the craft at all.
Each of these had text on them, each of these had an icon, each of these had to be maintained and managed across all localizations for the game.
They added bloat. They added busy work.
They added mismanagement. That's a waste of effort. It was annoying for the player
and it cost them a shitload of extra work. There was no benefit to that. You
don't need this many people in that role. They added Goldsink. You could have made
them free to be the same. They added filler. They added filler. Everything was
so expensive to make. It was. Yeah, it was. Too many cooks in the kitchen? No.
I think the problem is actually the opposite. I think the problem was not enough cooks and the reason why I say that is
Let's look at Steven Sharif's interest. He loves
Arcage. He loves the shit out of Arcage, right?
He loves the shit out of that game. It's one of his favorite games. Let me go pull this up real quick.
I'll show you this. I
Sent this to him because I was pissed off
off. You can see my angry messages. I sent this to Stephen Sharif and to Margaret. This
is my write up about sport fishing. And when I make claims like this of the boats being
the exact same design, I want to show you this. You see that? See that boat? Does that
look familiar? See this boat? See that radar? See that radar? Radar is a pretty
unique thing to put on a, you know, high fantasy boat. Because it's the exact same.
The design is the exact same. And the gameplay was also exactly the same. And
and the models and the way that it ran out read through this it's the same they
one-to-one copied it from arcage men they one-to-one copied it from arcage
including the general design philosophy of the boat
so when i make these types of claims where i'm like hey man i don't want to play
on your private server for arcage i want to play a video game that stands on its own
This is why I say that, because this is the exact same goddamn thing between these two.
It's really hard to fit all this on the screen at the same time. Yeah,
it's actually ridiculous to be honest with you. Super guy, they're ridiculous to me,
and it pisses me off. They did a marathon, they did. For that, I agree with you.
Can't wait for AOC private servers? I can. Funny though.
Most games copy mechanics from better games. That's where you're wrong. They don't copy
mechanics from better games. They innovate and iterate on them. This did not do that.
It was exactly the same. In fact, you can go and watch that complete
Sport Fishing Guide from 2024 for Arcage and it will tell you exactly how to do it
in Ash's creation because it is one to one even down to the damage numbers on the fish.
It's the same. It's exactly the same. It is not innovative. It is not iterative.
It is the same. It's not a copy. It's a copy paste. It's different.
I take inspiration from other games that directly copy them. Correct. You take inspiration. You iterate and innovate.
And I even said that in here. This is exactly the same gameplay loop interactions iconography and both design to accomplish the task.
There is nothing iterative on this design and it is not unique in any way.
I'm extremely disappointed to see this in Ashes and it makes it feel like an archage private server feature instead of an up-and-coming MMO that stands on its own.
Now, here's the death knell for that.
This was the most well put together system
for all of professions, and it wasn't even theirs.
The most fun I had engaging with professions in the game
was this, and it's because they didn't design it.
That's wild, dude.
How's that a scam?
I would say that from March 2025 until now this game is devolved into the dog
shit dude. Yeah. People play these slot RPGs and laugh at CD. No, I don't think
that's the case. This game was really good up until that point, man. It was
really good. And I guarantee that if you play Call of Duty, you've pitched
about Call of Duty before. Guaranteed. Hired the same developer. No, dude.
That's cope. Like come on. Do you want to know why this is even funnier? Do you know
why this is even funnier? It wasn't just boat design. Do you know why the boat is
designed this way? One of the steps that you have to do is after you run the
fish out of HP doing the exact same mini game between both games, you have to
jump in the water and get the fish and then climb back into your boat. That's
why it has these ramps. That's literally the reason it has those.
Archeage designed their boats with their systems in mind.
When people brought this up to Stephen on the live stream, he said that it's intended because it adds friction.
You're already in the middle of the water in a PVP zone with 25 gold worth of boat around you.
And if you lose it, you lose it all.
The reason why they added that friction to Archeage is because in Archeage you could repair your boat for one gold.
gold. You didn't lose it forever when it died. They needed to add that friction and they needed
a boat design to support the action. Ashes didn't need that. They just copy-pasted.
And they didn't understand the in-game economic reasons for designing it this way.
Ridiculous. See, when I see that, it screams to me, you don't even know why you're copying
us. What is the game on the left? Archeage. Which is Steven
Shrieff's favorite game. Yeah. Yeah, friction, dude. So like, no, you're not going to convince
me that that was fine. That's not fine. Archeage was good. It seems like Archeage is good. Yeah.
It seems like it's also pay to win, which is why I wouldn't go around copy pasting systems.
Yeah, it's not even let me borrow your homework, just change a couple of things.
They didn't change anything. They just copied the homework man
Yeah, it is in fact a worse copy. That is correct
They copied it wholesale without the economic systems around it that made it work
So it's actually a worse implementation the original even though it's a one-to-one copy, which is
mind-boggling
It's it's insane. Yeah, they photocopied it in black and white exactly remove all the color ridiculous
Yep
His favorite game was pay-to-win. Actually, he hated that it was pay-to-win. So he wanted to make a non-pay-to-win version of that, effectively.
How do you copy something and mess it up? You copy something and mess it up in this case because he didn't understand the design philosophy behind it.
He didn't understand the grand reason that that was made that way. He just knew that it was that way.
As a player, he understood that it was there and it was playable in that form and that it was fun for him at the time.
But he didn't know why,
obviously, or they would have designed the entirety of the economic system around that.
That's it.
Like, it's just a failure to understand the design of the system.
What people don't realize is when you are making a video game and you are building
a system in it, and that system has to be compelling for players, they have to find
it fun.
You need to think about how that system interacts with everything else in the entire
game.
Economically, how does it work?
Game flow-wise, how does it work?
Based on the other actions the players learn throughout the game in terms of the controls,
how does it work?
Every single thing in that game has to be purpose built to fit into the rest of the game.
So when you copy paste wholesale a system from one to the other, it's going to feel
out of place because that other game wasn't designed for it.
That's the problem.
The created diminishing returns, the bots killed it by running it into the ground.
Oh yeah, they were teleporting from our node over and over again.
They were just doing that the whole time
Copy and paste without understanding sounds like some of the LLM stack overflow. Yeah, that's exactly it. It's vibe code shit
Steven spoke way too high and mighty to be in this
Situation I feel Steven is a salesman. He's very good at it
And I think the thing is is he was very passionate, right?
Steven's very passionate about the game and he's not wrong for being passionate
What he is wrong for is implementing this board and they're not telling anyone.
What he may be wrong for is the financials behind the company.
But I don't know or understand enough about that to speak on it.
That's for somebody else to talk about.
What I can talk about is the design and management of the team, which is a shit show.
Legitimately so.
Yeah.
It's rant day?
Yeah, no, it's got to be a little bit of rant dating.
it has to be. This was the last five years of my life. I have supported and played this game
since 2021. So like, we're going to talk about it, right? The boss didn't hurt anything, but the econ
that was supposed to have been wiped regularly, yet they opened a PTR. Dude, none of that should
make any sense. Do you want to know one of the biggest missteps that they had in the last one?
They fixed some of the economic drivers, and they fixed a lot of the questing, and then
they put it on PTR. And then on PTR, they were like, hey, visual NDA, don't tell anyone
anyone about this.
It's like, like, what are you doing, man?
You're trying to save the vision of your game.
Like, what are you, what are you doing?
ASU was a scam, who'd have thought?
I don't think it was a scam.
I think it was heavily mismanaged.
I think there was one piece of this
that I would agree with you as a scam.
And that's launching on Steam.
That makes no sense.
The game is not ready for that shit in any possible way.
The board existing is extremely Stephen's fault?
Yes, that's what I feel like it is.
That doesn't make any sense.
Why do they do that?
But we don't know anything about the board.
We just know that he said that it exists, right?
Like we know this.
Control of the company shifted away from me.
The board began directing actions
that I could not ethically agree with or carry out.
What board, dude?
We still don't know.
You say he is the board, but he's not.
He's not.
So like, what's the board?
It feels like deflection
because we've never been informed of a board.
However, the reason that I feel that way
and why it makes sense from your position,
I've talked to some of the devs.
One of the devs let me know that six months ago,
a board was implemented for the company
and ever since then it has been downhill.
I cannot confirm or prove that
beyond that developer talking to me.
So you should take it with a grain of salt.
With that in mind, if what they said is true,
then this shit makes sense.
But why was that never revealed to the public?
Right?
Any email I can send something to to this topic?
Why do you want to send an email?
Just DM me on Discord, man.
Boarding goes investors, not necessarily.
Just because you have investors
doesn't mean you have a board, right?
You don't want your Discord out there?
Oh, are you doing some like sneaky squirrel bullshit?
send it to go pirate software at gmail.com. That's my public email.
If it's some weird shit though, or if it's illegal for you to have it,
don't send that shit to me. I don't want it.
The average investigator, true.
They may have found something interesting about, I'm going to take it.
It's just going to come down to, wow, that's neat. I can't verify this.
Blow it away in the wind.
I think we need to look into Stevens Amazon purchases and see if he's bought
any mirrors.
What is it? What does that even mean, man?
His whole brand was that he was his own boss. Bingo. His whole brand was that he was his own boss.
His whole brand. And I'm mad about that. Legitimately mad about that.
That sucks. Kim King just announced he's trying to get Arcaneum 2 going. Oh, Arcaneum is so cool.
Arcane him is so cool
Arcane him is so cool dude, you've got a timer going so we see the receipt again. What receipt do you want to say?
That's something important which game are we collectively gonna consume now? That's what I want to find out right?
We've got a lot of games that are coming up. We've got cinder city that might be coming out this year from NC soft
We've got chrono Odyssey
That that is supposedly this year. We've got old-school runescape. We've got fable coming up
We've got Final Fantasy 14. We've got Guild Wars 2. We've got Dune. There's a lot of shit going on, dude.
So, like, I don't know yet. We don't have you online. I'm not playing that. You getting Guild Wars 2?
I have my Ritlock statue, man. I was an early supporter of Guild Wars 2. I have my, my, it's like a metal tin collector's edition.
I love the shit out of Guild Rooster.
Is Fable going to be an MMO? No? No, no, no.
You're actually playing Guild Rooster right now. It's a good game. I really enjoy it.
I'm not playing World of Warcraft. No, not interested.
Chrono Odyssey is supposedly Q4. Yeah.
Is it worth trying to get into old school RuneScape? Or should I stick to RuneScape 3?
That I don't know because I heard that RuneScape 3 is dropping the micro transactions, man.
Or like something with that. They're like reducing that shit
You see the kicks there for epitome it's an MMO look I'm gonna be honest with you
After five years of ashes of creation
My amount of blood left in my body for a Kickstarter MMO is a bit low. So I think I want to play one that's out
No hate to that game I just
Feel a little bloodless what I think about a little anemic, you know
You hear that face punch is trying to buy a new world from Amazon?
That's compelling.
I'm interested.
Yeah.
Bro, I just want to play Division 3.
Yeah.
Can we fill the chat with spiders?
I mean, you could.
I don't want to.
Yeah.
What do you guys want to know, though?
Let's ask some questions about this because I've got information here.
We've been talking about it the whole time.
I'm kind of over the rant now.
I'm just mad.
Ubisoft get to it.
That's all I care about from Ubisoft.
I just want more Division, man.
That's what Division 2.
That's what division, division three, technically.
That's in fable, super down, very interested.
Really enjoyed Chrono Odyssey beta, I really hype for it.
Oh, you got to play it, I didn't get to play it.
Is it fun?
I wanna know everything.
Ooh, face bunch COs and talks to the Amazon right now,
but it's confidential, shh, okay.
Hopefully.
How mad are you on a one to 10 and 11?
I'm an 11 level of mad.
The reason why I'm an 11 level of mad
It's because all throughout this, all throughout this, I was supporting them and I was telling them
when things were shit and when things were good and that's it.
Do you believe this game will be developed or do you think it's completely over?
I think the most likely outcome is that it's completely over
and it will be carved up piecemeal to be sold as Unreal Engine Assets.
Because they built everything in Unreal Engine in the latest Unreal Engine,
They have tens of thousands of assets, including models, items, monsters, environment set design,
and they have their mesh net system for mesh servers.
It would be a very good idea for them to stop development and sell that as tools.
Tools and assets.
That seems like the most likely outcome to me.
me. And if they don't do that, I would be incredibly surprised.
Does that make sense?
Is what ashes ready to be released, bro? The tools, I have no idea.
Carve it up and sell it. Makes the most sense to me.
Something out with the ashes is done, dude. Steven,
sure you stepped down. They're firing everyone. It's over.
Yeah, 100 artists, 100 artists and designers working for 10 years. It's a lot of assets.
Yep, debtors need to collect on debt. They will carve the company up and sell it piecemeal, 100%.
That's how I feel about that. Have you seen Labyrinth, the Hytel, and the Momon?
I did see that. I saw that they were working with some custom UI on there.
It's really tough to work with custom UI right now.
So I was very impressed with what they did with the tab menu because you just can't modify a lot of that shit
Why step down and fire everyone though, I don't know all I know is four days ago
I brought a problem to Stephen Sharif and Margaret and I gave them an ultimatum
They were not banning people that were saying insanely heinous shit in the video game
like
Wild shit shit. I can't show on stream. We've talked about it all day today
Four days later. They they ended the company
Stephen stepped down.
Their stance on it was that they would not be banning people, they would be giving them warnings to course correct them.
Even when this is people that are doing things like screaming praises for Hitler,
and telling everyone that they want to put together a party to kill all the LGBT people on the server.
Those are the people that they were giving warnings to.
Wild shit.
Shit you get banned for in any other game.
Shit that you get banned for in League of Legends and Eve online.
They ban you for that.
And they, they protected that. Yeah. It is insane. And all of us as players saw it, man.
We saw it every day in global chat and every day as people didn't get banned. So I brought
that up to them. They said that that was their policy. And I said, this is bullshit. And
if you don't fix this, I will leave. And they said, I don't want you to go. And
I was like, I'm out. Freedom of speech, bro. I'm going to tell you right now.
3, 4, 5, 3, 4. If your response to a guy screaming praises to Hitler is he should be able to do
that freedom of speech, you are dying on the worst hill, my dude. You look like a jackass.
Rethink that for just a minute. Take a second. Think about what you've just done.
And then get back up out of the chair because holy shit, my dude.
Joking bro.
That's wild.
That's bro.
Come on, man.
Yeah, no.
We're going to wait in the ads.
They're about to start.
It says ads starting soon.
Oh, it's been my bed. Yeah. Minus to this man. Fish reacts this man. Yeah, freedom of
speech is only for the government silence in your middle and not you getting banned from
a video game. Calm your constitution for a moment. People in their jokes. It's just
If it is, if it was a joke, dude, like you got to work on your better.
So it's not, that's not it.
Uh, you're looking real weird right now, man.
Oh my God.
That's why we have Kappa, you know, that's why we're a slash S.
If not a or C or Y, what's a good MMO right now?
That's what I'm trying to figure out.
I mean, you've got Guild Wars two, you've got Final Fantasy 14.
Those are the two that popped to my mind the most, right?
And I think that's the best.
Those, those two are probably in the best spot.
Old school runescape is cool, ESO is pretty cool.
City of Heroes, I thought that was gone.
Is that, is that still around?
Cause there's City of Heroes and City of Villains around, I might play that shit.
See, medicated, that one's funny.
That's a good joke.
I'm coming as a fan run server with NCSoft.
Ooh, that's cool with NCSoft's blessing.
that I like. You're still grabbing old school RuneScape? I should be.
I'm not doing it right now. I'm, I'm EXP lossing right now because I'm bad,
bad at RuneScape.
Freedom of speech. Yeah, exactly.
You got to remember your slash S dude.
Have you looked at where it wins me? Yeah.
I jailbroke their LLM in game and turned it into the muffin man.
I can't take that game seriously dude.
Yeah, I just can't I did it live too. I did it live. I had to tell me all about Drew Relaine in
London. Yeah, I did it. I did it live. It was stupid. It was so bad. I'm gonna move my runescape
over here. I'll just put it up there. You can have it. Let me see. Um, Twitter.
Let's grab this and we'll do from pirate software.
Still maxing strength.
Yeah, dude, crab abuse 100%.
Anti-free speech of it offends you.
Okay.
No, it's not really about anti-free speech of it offends you.
Like you can't go around doing that kind of stuff, right?
A lot of countries, it's straight up illegal.
You have to understand that if you are in a shared environment like that and you
You are saying horrific things like that, like saying you want to kill gay people.
That's terrible, dude.
Like that's called hate speech.
That's what that is.
That's not covered under freedom of speech.
That's called hate speech.
So like when you're talking about that, if you want to die on the hill and think that
people should be saying that instead of an MMO, I mean, you get to own that, right?
You can have that one if that's what you want, and that's the person that you
want to portray to the world that you think that that is okay.
luck with that. Because that ain't me. Yeah. Yeah, that's not. Have it. Have fun with that.
You actually feel worse about this than with Chronicles of Illyria. Turned out to be a scam.
Mostly because I didn't see this coming with Ashes. It's very disappointing. I think the
thing that really bothered me about this with Ashes is that the game was moving in a good
direction early 2025. It's moving in a great direction. And then after that, something
changed. And then when it changed, it started just turning to shit. Yeah, it started turning to
shit. And I think that was the biggest problem, dude. The biggest problem of that. The lawsuit
broke it. I think it imploded thoughts on star citizen. So I played star citizen. I did not like
the monetization of the game. I thought it was moving in a really bad direction monetization
wise, and it bothered the shit out of me. But I wanted to give it the good old college
try instead of just having my own personal opinions cloud me in terms of
judgment without experiencing it. So I played it and when I played it it had the
same feeling as Ash is a creation to me and I can sum up both games with one
sentence. It would be so cool if this worked. That's it. You could look at
any system, any environment, any interaction. Man that'd be cool if it
worked. And that's it. Both games were like that. Yep. That's it. Yeah. Imagine breaking
records, rating, raising money instead of finding pay when Oh, yeah, no, I don't. I don't
like the monetization for for star citizen. The monetization is really bad. I have not
meant a single player of Star Citizen that likes the monetization? Which is the whole thing?
Sorry, just got here. What the heck is that for a sentence?
Woke up the ashes of creation being shut down. It's good.
Come to Guild Wars 2. We want Pirates here. Dude, I'm down with that.
Like, I think Guild Wars 2 is really good and it doesn't have a subscription fee.
And because it doesn't have a sub fee, we can get everybody in and then be good with it,
right? Has Star Citizen even released properly yet? No.
I wonder what Star Citizen's dev team looks like.
I don't know.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
You upgraded to a 50-60, and now Star Citizen is playable.
That's funny.
I think my favorite bug that I had in Star Citizen out of everything, actually there's
two things that I found to be my favorite when playing through Star Citizen.
The first one is that you can just place anything on the ground, and everyone can
see it.
So I'm in a giant tower of hot dogs.
That's what you do.
You just fill the environment with hot dogs and they just stay there.
You can just make a billion of them.
There's just hot dogs everywhere.
I don't know why they did that, but you just can.
And there's a bunch of physics hot dogs now.
That's fine.
The Eiffel of Glyzzy can be made, yes.
Weird.
Weird design decision.
Definitely not performant.
It doesn't make any sense, but you can do it.
And then the other one was I was using a salvager to salvage a ship in which you peel it.
You peel the skin off of the ship that you're salvaging, which is weird, kind of a weird
move.
So you hit it with microwaves and peel it.
Very strange.
But during that, my ship just decided to go at full throttle forward when my hands weren't
even on the keyboard.
And it launched itself into it, exploded, and I instantly died.
And Tix was showing me through the game at the time, Tix was like, what happened?
was like, I don't know. And I was like, all right, yeah, the ship gained free will launched
itself directly forward two inches and blew up. Yeah. Yeah, you could crash the server
millions of hot dogs. So it seems it was hilarious, but also concerning. Yes. Come to ESO. I think
you'd like the armor system. So ESO really seemed compelling to me. It looked really
cool. Um, when I played ESO last time, I just ran around and stole everything.
All I did was steal. I just ran up to every NBC and I was like,
like that's all I ended up doing.
So I feel like I wouldn't end up playing that game. I would just steal it.
I would just steal. That's also an option. Good. Good. Yeah.
You love Star Citizen. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, like I wanted to get,
cause I'm not very happy about Star Citizen's monetization and I've
shit on it many times of the year. So I was like, dude,
I'm going to play it just to see, you know, because I, I should play it.
That's the right thing to do to try it.
If I don't like their monetization and see what about it?
I don't like, because that's, that's kind of my motto is don't hate it to you.
Wait, right?
And I, I ate it.
So I went, I went, bought a ship, did the thing.
And I was like, wow, no, this is a, so be cool if it worked.
Yeah.
And now with midnight, what do you mean midnight flop?
You think World of Warcraft's not fun?
I wasn't going to play it because it didn't like the monetization for midnight.
I don't like the idea of a paid-for currency that they added to the game.
So nothing works. Some of it works. Some of the time.
I'll give you an example. As I was walking through my hangar in Star Citizen,
they're so similar in terms of their development.
When I was walking through my hangar in Star Citizen,
suddenly at one point my character became very, very cold and was suffocating
because that spot just counted as outside of the space station.
space station. In space. Which is weird. Just weird shit like that. Where like it kind of
works if you stand near the elevator you might explode. That was cool. It was a little bit
weird. Have you tried Elite Dangerous? Elite Dangerous was probably the worst new player
experience I've ever had in any game in my life. And I was going through it with
a guide that was Zafaroth. It was terrible. That was the worst experience I have ever
had in a video game. I actually crashed out of that game. Yeah, 100%. It was terrible.
Yeah. What really? Yeah. In fact, I'll go read my review for this just so you can understand.
Because I left a negative review on it because I was like, this is horrible, man. I love
the skill issue on that.
You, there we go.
Uninstalled and attempted to refund the game.
Honestly, worst new player experience I have ever had pilot guide is outdated and
shows you why it no longer exists.
Tons of pilot tutorials are on outdated YouTube videos from the company.
Constantly receiving incorrect information for quests, non-descript
of errors when trying to perform basic tasks.
It just says something went wrong, something went wrong.
Like that was it.
That's all it would say.
First combat I got into the second my shields dropped my sensor was
It took me 40 minutes to figure out why no game features worked at all after that.
Suddenly, my ship just stopped working and nothing, nothing functioned.
And it would just say something went wrong.
There was, there was no indicator. There was no information.
There was nothing. The game taught you nothing about this.
I was like, what the hell is going on? Right?
Couldn't even dock because you can't request docking without a sensor.
Trying to manually dock gave me a fine and made me a criminal until I figured out how to pay it off.
After all of this, I tried to refund.
Oh, no. So from there, from that experience,
I didn't even put the rest of it in there.
I went back into space, went to Reddit,
because I didn't know what was going on.
Zafrot didn't know what was going on,
even though he played it for a long time.
You had to completely turn off your ship in space,
fully shut it down in space,
and then it rebooted,
and it goes through the manual automatic repair,
and it does a repair cycle and then fixes it.
So that fixed that, and I was like, holy shit.
Finally fixed this thing.
Then I docked, right?
And I was like, okay, I don't want to do that.
I'm not going to go do combat.
Maybe I'll do a career mission.
So I'm gonna go do a career mission, right?
And I've already paid off the first one.
Pick up the career mission and once we go to the planet,
I hop a couple of systems, I go to the planet,
I'm going down to the planet,
it's got an indicator of where I'm supposed to go.
And I'm like, cool.
And then it's like, cool, you're near the planet.
Now you got to go from this manually,
you have to manually pie it.
I was like, cool, I'm gonna go to the reticle,
they're showing me, I'm gonna manually pie it
in the direction.
As I approached it, it said, you have trespassed.
You can have another fight.
And I was like, I am done with this shit.
Like this is awful, dude.
Like this is the worst experience.
And at that point, I think it was about an hour of gameplay,
hour and a half of gameplay.
I was like, this is, I've done what the game told me to do.
And it's just shitting the bed constantly.
So I installed it and I went to bed angrily, got up the next day.
And I was like, maybe I'll give it another shot.
And then I go to look and I was like, maybe I'll get him a shot.
Maybe I won't, I screw it.
I didn't have a good time.
I'm going to refund it, but I couldn't because the launcher was running in the
background.
And I racked up 21.4 hours on record from the launcher, so they wouldn't refund it.
And I was like, I don't want to play this game again, dude.
It was so bad.
It was such a bad experience.
And to be real with you, it might be better now, but this was back in 2022 and that shit
sucked, man.
It might be in a better spot now.
If you guys play Elite Dangerous, is it in a better spot now?
As someone who's played Elite Dangerous for 600 plus hours, I understand you.
Okay, I'm glad you understand.
I'm glad you understand,
because holy shit was that wild, dude.
It was just so bad.
It was not a good experience.
And it's rare that I put a negative review on a game, man.
Like I have to be really upset.
Yeah, it was, you haven't played in a bit.
Okay, it's better now.
I'll be interested.
Oh wait, my crab, my crab's left.
You started like last week after two year break?
Wild.
Like 10 hours of learning curve.
learning curve would be fine.
The problem that I had with it was all
of the official documentation was wrong.
It showed you guys that didn't exist.
It showed like, like their videos were like,
this is how you do this.
And it didn't work that way in game at all.
And I was like, where am I supposed to go
to figure this game out?
If everything that you put out
is the developers is wrong.
I was like, what do I do with this?
So that sucked, man.
Yeah.
It's better now, not great, but not terrible.
That's good to land your ship.
Press the any key.
Yeah, right.
They need to be updated again.
Oh, so they're out of date again.
Oh my God, no.
You just want Pacific Drive in space.
That's kind of Eve online.
Yeah, learning cliff.
Yeah, you should not let trend be art.
No, I can't play games if you're all right.
I vomit, dude.
I get really badly motion sick.
Like super bad, man.
I can't do it.
So playing old school.
But yeah, you haven't played it a lot, man.
Have you played Foxhole yet?
Dude, Foxhole is very fun.
I got into Foxhole and everybody was very positive and very nice.
The problem is, is the phase that I tried to play, because I tried to get into the
game, there was like some kind of a duping issue and everything exploded.
So like that kind of didn't give me a good experience in the game.
And like I want to play it again because the game seems very fun.
Yeah.
Yeah. Very cool, Jimmy Neutron. Proud of you. AI I born? I don't know what that is, man. Airborn?
Don't know what that is. Yeah, no clue. Oh, oh, the Fox, so Foxhole is going to get an aircraft
update. That's what you meant when you said airborne. Okay. There would be a logic player? Yes. Yes,
I would. I love logistics. When I played Eve, I was a logic player, which is a healer,
Effectively and I really really enjoyed that very much. So that's my favorite role love it
You said I'm proud of you to me. I'm happy. Well, I mean, yeah, dude
Be your best self man, whatever that is
You need to play X4 you'd like it. Hmm
Have you ever played eco is that the the voxel game where you have to like take care of the environment?
I've never played it, but I think you've seen it
Yeah
You're sorry you're late that demazio you're good dude he busts in the door. Sorry I'm late
What's your opinion lost arc I actually played a shitload of lost there and pull this up
I had a win conditional lost arc because I played it fully free to play for 620 hours
I played the living shit out of it, and I loved it. I actually really enjoyed it. I never spent a dime
I didn't spend a single dollar. I got every bean on the entire map all the secrets and
My win condition was to beat all the content available in the game
Which I did at the time and then get the pirate ship and I unlocked the pirate ship all free to play
Yeah, the mokoko beans got them all so those are my win conditions
I did it and I installed the game because it turned into at the at the end game it turned into a brick wall of
Random upgrades per week or pay money, which I just thought was shit. Yeah, I won the game
I won my win condition
Yeah, the end game is really weird
I will tell you that lost arc probably had the best progression system of any MMO I'd ever played
Any system that you got was never borrowed power
Any system that you played it stayed with you forever
And you just kept adding systems like this one is now skills and like skill variant stuff
And this one is now gems and you and you know put gems into it
Like it was just everything you unlocked just made you more and more powerful, right?
It wasn't lost or incredibly pay to win. I didn't spend a dime. I did all the content of the game
My win condition was to do every boss fight in the game fully free to play and
Get the the super rare pirate ship, which was like the hardest to get ship at the time and I got it
I got them both
And that was it and then I went around to my pirate ship and won a bunch of races and that was it
It's great
Good master's a fun take place I played Paladin. It's fun
Big big sword time
Loser PPP was actually the best in the arena ever played do the PVP was great. Oh my god. The PVP was awesome. It was such a fun game
Dungeons and Dragons online is 25 gigs, but the game is old
Well boss you guys do I don't remember dude last time I played was 2023 at the time it was all content available
That was it. That was everything that was on there
Veteran cape and old school Rinscape. No, I'm a new player at old school Rinscape. I have a 99 agility. It was my first 99 ever
You can see it there
That is this is my first real character in old school Rinscape and that is my first 99 got 99 agility
loved it
people called me like a
Like weird for doing that one first, but like I don't care. Why'd you choose agility? I liked it. I
Actually really enjoyed it
Yeah, I was trying to get the squirrel pet, but I never got it. So
Yeah, that's the 90 and thanks man. Shea was very angry about it
That's true because she's still she's played old school RuneScape for most of her life and still does not have a 99
and I 99
Any mmo's you have your eye on yes, so there's an MMO a while back called project LLL
And it kind of showed up looked frickin amazing and then fell off my radar
It got rebranded as cinder city
It's owned by NC soft. I've been waiting for this game for like four years
So I'm kind of excited for this like I'm really excited for this game. It's called cinder city
And the idea is that you are a tactical. It's a tactical shooter, right?
MMO
With like SCP shit, and I mean like giant horrible multi-armed demon of the sky that rips apart a reality kind of SCP shit
Wild really got them cool. Yeah. I
Really was blown away by it. It's also got robots that you can like jump into a giant robot body and then just
you know
What happened to thrown in liberty didn't NC soft make that I really got bored with thrown in liberty
I kind of got to the end game of thrown in liberty
we were doing our guild stuff and I realized that it felt like a phone game and what I mean by that is
I'd log in every day to get my reward package for the day
And then like do my dailies from a UI and then log out
And I was like this is not really what I care about at all and it just got really boring right
Do you play firefall? I did firefall was really fun for a little while. Uh, whatever happened with firefall
I actually don't know it's too long ago
kind of like once human. No, no, no, no, no. No, project LL is very different. Let me pull
this up. Project LL trailer. Let me show you the official gameplay trailer for this. This
will kind of kind of blow you away with this. It was all in Korean is NC soft, right? But
like they have sections where it's like sneaky. Like it's more like division in
in terms of like the movement sneaking mixed with like destiny, right?
Like it's really cool. And I think this is super fun, right?
Powerful diet a long time ago, but like, look at this. It's very destiny.
You got your little guy, you go around and this is an MMO, right?
How's the progress on hardbound going? I put out an update yesterday, man.
So you got this active stealth, active camo, all this kind of stuff.
And then you get out into the open world area and you've got more like
division. Division with destiny style powers. I'm super down for that, man. Like that's,
I'm really excited for that. And then you get to the end of this. Let's go over here.
This was a part that was really compelling to me as well. Let me grab this real quick.
Climbing up into this, you start getting into the weird like SCP style shit, right?
So they're doing something to like change reality when they interact with these.
And I don't understand that, but they've never really explained it.
But it's like a phase shift.
So that guy's a bomb.
But that's generally the idea, right?
It feels very once-human.
I disagree because once-humans combat felt really clunky compared to this, right?
And then you've got the robots.
The robots are really cool.
So he knocks this one down and then jumps into it,
hacks the robot, rips the guy out of it.
And look at that UI transition.
Like, that's cool, man.
So I was super down with that.
I was like, oh, it's very Titanfall, right?
Yeah, division, but with Titanfall style mechanics.
And I was like, that's just good feeling.
Yeah, it was slick, exactly.
So this is when I first saw this,
I was like, this is freaking amazing looking.
Is it like five FPS?
Oh, there it is.
Chloe's at 20 and 60.
Yeah, it's really low FPS here.
It feels low FPS.
I think it's just the rate of the gun and the projectiles.
Right?
This is not actually five FPS.
If you're seeing that,
it might be the broadcast being a problem.
And then,
robot battle,
UI breaking,
I thought that was really slick.
The slide there was really cool.
It reminded me of armored core, right?
Does that make sense?
Feels pre-rendered?
I don't think this is pre-rendered
because they've done other gameplay footage since then.
This is definitely a cinematic here though.
Watch this.
Hecateon carries.
So it looks like it's time play.
Like, see, it's this actual gameplay footage
from development build.
So it's actually gameplay footage
is what they've marked it as.
And I was like, that's cool as shit, right?
So you've got a little Titanfall, you got a little destiny,
you got a little division, you've got a little SCP.
And I'm like, that's just kind of cool, right?
That's kind of cool.
And that's the game.
So I was like, I need to know more about this.
And then it disappeared.
And now it's called Cinder City.
Little SCP, it's a little bit of SCP.
And maybe it turns out shit, maybe it doesn't,
but this is on my radar, man.
Like that's the game.
It's been on my radar for a while.
Yeah.
What does it come out?
We know nothing.
shit man. I don't know shit at all. But um, that's it. I think
they have gear YouTube and that's it. Yeah, they put out some
new stuff in 2025. Two months ago, they put out some new stuff.
And this is all we've really seen, man. Yeah, kind of like
control. I did play a little bit of control. But this one is
very different. This one's more like division, more like
destiny. Now it's starting to get like a little bit more
Chunky in terms of like the environments
Also, there's this thing so they want to do like big gross monsters, right?
I'm kind of into that right it seems it seems kind of like warhammer 40k in terms of like
Or or dead space in terms of like the enemies, right?
I'd like to see you play more control. I haven't played control
in a long time
I might play control too. It's not that I didn't like control
It's that it's weird now and the reason it's weird now is because in the middle of me playing my playthrough of control
Dr. Disrespect got outed
And it kind of like feels weird to me to play it now and I know that that probably doesn't make a huge amount of sense
But it was really weird for me and I did it makes it weird to play the game
That's all. It just was really weird. Yeah. Control is an amazing game. It is. Yeah. It
was very cool. I just have this weird, like negative association with it now where I was
like, man, Dr. Do you got what? Uh, he admitted that he had a sexual texting with a minor
on Twitter dude. That was really weird. The whole thing was bad. And like the moment
that happened, it happened while I was doing my playthrough of control on stream.
And I was like, I don't know if I want to play this again.
Because every time I play it, I think about that.
And I was like, that's fricking gross.
Yeah, super weird.
Yeah.
You're about to make a political joke.
There's no political joke, dude.
Would you play Albion online?
Albion might be a lot of fun.
I've heard that it's incredibly pay to win though.
And I know it's pay to win.
I don't like pay to win social sandboxes.
If I'm going to play a social sandbox, I need to make sure
that I'm fighting someone's skill, not their wallet.
Does that make sense?
Have you heard of Nine Souls? I have. I haven't played it yet. I want to.
Do you continue your playthrough of Elden Ring? I don't know. I've found over time that Souls
likes kind of aren't for me. The reason why is I don't like fighting the the ads before the boss
over and over again. You never had an issue with Padawan? That's fair. I do though. Like it's
it's a bother to me. Did you hear about Dr. Disrespect faking the invited preview for High
I did see that, and that was really weird.
That was really weird where he said he was like invited to the preview for high guard and he said he showed up with a Lambo.
And then the high guard team was like, no, he didn't.
What are you talking about?
That was really weird.
That was really, that was.
I don't understand that shit at all, man.
Waited with bated breath for the global release of Antio.
Really?
Really?
I don't know anything about that and two is going to be a thing.
Hmm.
He tried or joked about making merch, but it to he did.
It was just strange.
Yeah, that's obviously a joke.
To make that statement, you think that's a joke.
No, I don't, I don't think that's a joke at all.
I think that because of the negative connotation
with himself as a creator, tying himself to their brand
could cause actual damage to their brand.
There are people that would likely not want to play
that game specifically because it's tied to him.
That's not a joke.
That's business, and it's damaging business.
So you have to understand that.
There's a very serious thing there.
Aloha, are you doing good?
Yeah.
Isn't AN2 already out?
I don't know anything about it.
I don't even know AN2 was gonna be a thing.
Is it only in like Japan or something right now or only in Korea?
It's actually going to be a thing.
No.
Classic Aeon, classic NCsoft.
Dude, look at the swimming in that. Oh, dude, the movement looks really good.
Is this in Korea right now?
Korean time on. The one thing that I like about NCsoft
soft a lot of the time is when they release a game in the West, it's very perfected in
terms of like no problems really fleshed out because they've already found all the problems
in their Korea audience. Like the Korean audience finds everything. The problem that
I have with NCsoft is they always inject a shitload of pay to win garbage into it.
That's the issue that I have with it, which makes sense because they're a Korean based
developer.
And in Korea, pay to win is normal and socially acceptable.
That's the problem.
For Battle Passes Wild, yeah, I can't get behind that.
Korea likes that.
That's a normal thing there.
Korea, China, it is very normal there.
What are your thoughts on Ash's creation?
I already put them out.
I quit the game four days ago and I quit because they were not moderating the servers
at all.
developers directly for that.
I put out a negative review on the game and, uh,
then they closed the studio for that. So that's the thing.
I basically showed up and went, this is dumb.
And they were like, you're right, blow it up.
Yeah. They killed it off instead. Ashes is dead, dude.
Not even a joke. Yep.
And unfortunately, uh, I was the largest streamer for the game.
So, neat.
Yeah, I've been supporting them since 2021 and trying to clear up
misinformation about the game and talking to the development process and
teaching, be able to put bug reports and then they just shit themselves in the
last year.
And I called them out on absolutely everything.
And I was like, this is awful.
Like, what are you doing?
And, uh, called them out here too.
Also awful.
And that's it.
Did you record the interview?
Which interview?
What are you talking about?
We got ads are gonna wait on the ads
My refund got rejected by steam because you have more than char as a gameplay. Oh, yeah a lot of people's will
But this is gonna be a whole thing dude
You're someone responsible for people buying the scrap no actually so what I was doing the entire time was telling people
Do you want to play a social sandbox? You may not like that?
Maybe you should try Albion's first Albion first
Are you okay with the game that is super scuffed?
It may not ever exist because it's an alpha. It's got a lot of bugs and
Are you okay with your character being wiped?
If you are, if you're okay with that, then playing it just makes sense.
But if you're not, don't do it.
If any, if you're even on the fence, don't do it.
What are your thoughts on Narcan retrospect now?
Exactly the same.
He lied about the desert.
Like he shouldn't have lied about that.
Dude, dude could have made his point that he didn't like the direction of
development without lying.
And he lied.
He lied about that.
And I showed that in a video directly, showed it off directly and said, like,
dude, you lied about that.
This is what the environment actually looks like.
And I think people are kind of rose to the glasses in that and not remembering what his
actual statements were.
Which is why I went on Asmongold stream to clear it up about the game.
Like that was the whole reason that I ended up doing it.
Let's say Albion has paid a win.
If someone buys gear with money, they won't have the skill to beat you.
No, no, that's the same slippery slope as even online, man.
If you get a bunch of players that are skilled versus a bunch of players that are skilled
and one side buys a bunch of really good gear and the other side has to farm it all up,
the people who buy the gear are at an advantage.
You are buying an advantage.
Yeah, that's buying an advantage.
And I think that if you don't admit that, I think it's a little disingenuous.
You are still buying power, whether you know how to use it or not.
What about vintage story?
I do need to play vintage story.
I might set up a server for that, for the community.
What was the cause of the shutdown?
We'll go into it.
Okay, ads are over, we're back, right?
Yeah.
What is this?
The mental gymnastics, the most thing to do,
think every pay-to-win user is clueless as nuts.
Where did I say that a pay-to-win user was clueless?
Where did I say that?
Show me the clip.
Betting you can't.
So with that in mind,
this was the statement from Stephen Sharif.
This is the shutdown. Yeah. Have you heard of packs? They, I played packs. They, when
it was super early, I think it was too early for them to put it up. Yeah. I think it was
too early for them to put it out. It was not at a good state. That must have really
struck a nerve. No, no, I just call it bullshit, dude. Like if, if somebody's making a claim
of like the way that I feel, I'm just going to be like, okay, we're on then, prove it.
That's how that's always going to go, man.
You're not talking about you, you peanut, then who are you talking about?
You didn't at anybody, dude.
If you're talking in a streamer's chat and you don't at anybody else, you're talking
to the streamer, my dude.
That's how that shit works.
There's no reply.
There's no at.
talking to the streamer, man. I, maybe, maybe it's because I actually read my chat.
I know there's a lot of streamers out there that don't read their chats.
Not used to it, but like,
I love the you peanut though. That's funny as shit.
They weren't a good state. Like New Jersey.
The peanut is great.
I usually call people melons. So I get it.
What's the next game that similar to ashes mean the boys are lost.
There isn't anything right now and I think that's the problem then, like Ash's creation
was actually in a really good spot in early 2025.
Hey, Nick's, thank you to the Reading Party 3, hope you're having a good day man.
So like it was in a really good spot in early 2025 and they've just shit the bed since
and there's really nothing that fulfills that goal.
The only thing that I would say that's close is Eve online, but it's heavily paid
away and corrupt.
So like you have this serious problem there that's just not going to work,
right?
Final Fantasy 14 is really good, but that's not a social sandbox.
old screwing scape is good. And I play that all the time, but it's mostly just
killing. It's kind of how I feel about it a lot of time. Right?
That's what I'm doing right now. Yeah.
You managed to reach your chat, which was my mind.
I had to learn to do that very fast to me.
It just sucks because Ashley's had potential. It did.
No, it had a shitload of potential and an absolute shitload of potential.
And it's just wild to me to see this.
Hey, is that's coming along and old screwing scape? Well, I am at 61,
I'm at 84 strength now. I'm at 99 agility. There's my two primaries right now. So I've been working on
So I'm done with agility and I'm working on strength
Great even your chance by the way. Thanks, man mortal online. So mortal online. I've heard weird things about I don't know how to feel about it
Yeah
What's the state of Eve you mentioned it's corrupt what do you mean so even line has the system called the
Stiller council basically right the CSM and
You vote for CSM members, they get flown up to the actual studio that runs at CCP, right?
They get flown up there and they get to talk to the devs directly and like have a whole council and everything like this.
The Council of Stellar Management is what they're called.
The problem is those guys get insider information.
They trade that insider information to their corporations and alliances and their alts and they use that to manipulate markets
to set up for when a change is coming through,
which is why everyone who's ever been on the CSM is a multi-trillionarity.
The game is rigged. Just kind of like real-life politics. It's not great, right?
On top of that, the game is also pay-to-win. You can use real money to
turn into plexigame to sell for isk to buy anything that you want in the game.
And you could say you have to have, you know, a player versus another player
and they have to have the skill to fly the ship and they got to
understand angular velocity and everything that goes along with that.
I get it, I get it, I played E for 15 years.
But, if you have two skilled players,
and one of them has the skills for one ship,
and one of them has the skills for the counter,
and the guy over here doesn't have the skills for the counter,
he can just buy them, and then he can buy the ship.
And that's the problem.
Then first, support the shit out of this game?
I did, I did support the shit out of it,
when they were doing right.
And since then, I have not.
On January 9th, I put out this negative review for the game.
Four days ago, I called out the developers
for having no moderation on our server whatsoever.
I then quit the game and uninstalled it four days ago
and ended our guild.
And then they closed the studio today.
I've been very public about that the entire time, man.
You got an idea about how even my manager
survived for that long?
Spite, it's literally spite.
Players and Eve hate each other viciously.
It's like a box of rabid cats.
But when they leave the box, they feel strange.
So they go back into the box.
I understand that because there is,
when you play Eve for long enough,
you have to draw to return to Eve.
Also, to be clear,
Eve Online is a brilliant video game.
It is actually amazing.
It is really, really good.
It's just riddled with pay to win and corruption.
But it's a very, very good game.
And that's the problem.
If it wasn't so good, I wouldn't feel so bad.
But it is so good.
Hard start into it.
It requires a healthy love of trains, but yeah, you could do it.
It was great before skill injectors.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Can you show us your favorite Eve trailer?
No, I don't want to promote Eve, dude.
Survive in spite and keeps coming back for more.
Sounds like your family.
Yeah.
They didn't shut down the game.
It'll downscale it. Here's the problem though, right?
They owe a shit little money.
There's this mysterious board
that we've never heard about as players.
And then on top of this, you've got,
let's think about the business, right?
Let's think about the business of ashes of creation.
Let me go show you something that really bothers me.
We actually showed it off earlier.
This right here is their employee breakdown.
As per LinkedIn, they have 206 employees.
101 of those are Arts and Design,
65 or engineering nine or quality assurance
What are you doing my dude? What are you? What are you doing like what?
That does not
No wonder it's full of shit
See the problem. That's a big problem. Yeah, so like
It's not it's not great as for the people are actually on LinkedIn
I'm gonna be honest with you if you're working in tech you likely have a LinkedIn
It is very rare that you don't it's very very rare. Yeah
So like this kind of aligns with what was going on.
I'll give you an example, right?
I contacted Steven Sharif and I said,
yo, our town doesn't have a mount assigned.
I'm the mayor and I didn't get a flying mount.
He was like, oh shit, we got to fix this.
He contacted his QA team.
QA team said, oh no, we didn't check that
only for Brian Barrell and Corrin.
Those are the two that were broken, right?
So he said, okay, I'm gonna have QA get on it.
They're gonna get in touch with you.
And I was like, cool man, how long is it gonna take?
He's like, just a couple of minutes.
I waited for an hour and a half.
I waited for an hour and a half
and then they couldn't give me a mount.
They had to give me a cosmetic mount with 0% stats
so that I could fly until they fixed it.
It's been over a month.
It never got fixed.
Yeah.
So like, if you're wondering if this actually is accurate,
I would believe so.
I sat in game for an hour and a half after the game director told them to send a QA guy to give me a mount
Because I couldn't get it
Because it was broken
Dude, that's wild right I
Don't know how you drop the ball and something like that bad QA constraints
The reason that that happens is because of a lack of QA
like systems, basically, you have to set up what are called like task plans, like grab this, I'm gonna grab this here. So you set up a checklist, we're basically be like, Hey, here's a settlement inside of that settlement, we have to check them out, we have to check by orders, we have to check commissions, we have to check to make sure that the node can actually go and level up. You have to check the general environments for this and the NPCs and like each of these ends of being a checklist box.
Two of the nodes in our region, two out of 26 total, didn't follow this checklist for the
amount.
Other ones, which I believe it was a totally different number, it was like a bunch of them,
didn't follow this checklist for commissions.
Other ones didn't follow this checklist for buy orders.
They were all over the place, which means a lack of QA process.
There's nothing to do with anything else.
just missing QA and my bet is that happened because there was only nine
staffers right and I don't even blame the QA for that man I don't blame QA for
that at all I blame they're lack of numbers that's wild you can't do that
shit that doesn't make any sense yeah that doesn't make any sense
I've been in that world before, Sam.
They were just doing Fallout-style vault experiments.
Do you see what you would work with?
What would work?
Damn, that's just bad.
Don't say that.
Okay, if we put a settlement in here and we don't give them a mount, how angry do players
become?
What if we give them no quests over on this one?
Yeah, it's literally Vault Corp, dude.
It's Vault Deck.
My crazier is this insanely large staff.
It's a lot of staff for this.
Now, here's the most likely direction that I see this going.
You have 10 years of development,
hundreds of thousands of assets in game.
You've got environmental models,
you've got terrain models,
you've got buildings,
you've got items, weapons, armor, races,
character models, monster models.
You have all of this shit, right?
What do you do with it?
You sell it.
You package that shit up and you sell
That's what you do
You sell it my guess is
They will take this into little boxes and sell this the features
Done. I don't see that happening either way, dude. I I think they're gonna sell them as unreal engine
prefabs for stuff. I
Think that the the server system that they have the mesh system for that is a really good product
to sell. I would not be surprised if they'd turn that into sellable materials at this
point.
Because the game is over. Party's done, dude. They've done the Warn Act. They got 60 days
to fire everybody, and they don't have enough money for payroll, which is the claim right
now. So if that turns out to be true, that's wild. So like, that's it. Sell it off.
Carve it up and sell it off. That's the only way that I can see this going, man.
I hope it's not that, but I'm betting it is.
Basically, when you're firing so many people all at once,
there's like some government stipulations that go in.
I believe they have to pay the next 60 days of their payment to those employees.
That's what I think Warren triggers after 50 employees.
It's like 50 plus employees that get fired.
You then have to do that during a layoff.
That's what it is.
If you want to play social sandbox and moe uo outlands is always a choice. How old is that game?
That's ultimate line. Yeah, I don't anything about that
Did pirate talk about the air see shut down what's on your screen?
You always secretly one of the best demos ever is it hmm
You guess narc was right no narc light about the desert and I called him out for that I
I really don't like the idea of like,
Narc was right, Narc was right.
Cause it, it takes you out of the conversation
and stops you talking about what's actually going on here.
And it doesn't make sense based on
what his claims were originally.
Yeah.
I hope those developments get better
in the job game industries.
Yeah, I hope so too.
But it's, you're at the worst time in history
for tech industry jobs.
So I think that's the problem with that, dude.
Narc was semi-right. I think Narc was upset about the direction of the development of the game,
which at the time I didn't agree with him.
And the reason why is because that was early 2025.
Early 2025 was the best time for us as a creation.
It was phenomenal. Developers were super communicative.
They were doing a really good job.
They were like, the game was getting constant updates.
Like everything was moving in the right direction at the time that he dropped a video saying,
I hate all of this, made no sense.
And then he lied about the desert, which it was a provable lie.
We did a video flyover of the area that he was talking about.
He just, he just lied, dude.
So he tried to prove a point and he tried to back it up with a
narrative, like backup his narrative with a lie.
I can't get behind it.
And that's it.
You have to, if you're going to be mad, you have to be mad about
something real.
This is something real.
Be mad about this, right?
Sure.
The environment was there, but there's nothing else relate.
That's not true.
That's actually completely inaccurate.
Here, I'll go give you a video.
Let me grab this.
I'm going to show you the video where I refuted his claim entirely.
You may have not seen this.
Yeah, literally, I put out a video refuting his claim one year ago.
This was in January 11, 2025, showing off his, this is what he was showing.
And then if we go into this, you can actually see what the desert really looks like at
the same time. What he did to get that video footage was go to the very bottom of the unfinished
part of the desert near a node that was not actually built up and then spun around in
a circle saying the whole desert works this way. And it didn't look that way at all.
It was just wrong. He lied. He went to an area of the game that was not finished and
then complained that the whole desert looked that way. And it was not true. Like it's
It's so shitty dude. Yeah. Oh my god. So we look at this like that whole environment was awesome looking good. It was really awesome looking.
There's all kinds of stuff in there too. We get out in the actual desert out here. Look at this.
This is exactly where we're standing. You see that that arc right there across the map? This is where we're standing.
And in his video, right there with that same arc across it, looking out of the desert, see
that little tiny hut out there?
See that?
The problem was, when he released that video, this is actually what it looked like.
Because that's the node.
That's the node plug.
So I was like, oh, it doesn't.
You're full of shit.
Yeah.
If I recall it correctly, that becomes ocean later.
It does. It's actually ocean now.
It's not an infinite desert anymore.
I'm mad about the whole funded completion thing.
What funded a completion thing you have said about?
Yeah, what thing are you talking about?
You think the steam release was a move by Stephen?
Or by the board of directors?
Bro, the board idea? I hate that shit.
Yeah, oh that's true. Bye. I think that's more true
Yeah, the board thing pisses me off we were never informed his players that there was a board we were informed to the opposite that
Like we were informed to the opposite
It's funny because there's so much wrong with the game. You need to make things up exactly that was the thing
That's why I was so pissed about I was like dude this shit. That's actually wrong with the game
We can talk about that don't make shit up. This is just it just defeats your argument man
like complain about shit that's real. That's all you need to do. Yeah. Yeah, you just don't,
you don't need to make shit up to prove your point. His video was about the desert. It was
about Stephen constantly lying and misrepresenting the state of the project, which has to be proven
correct. The problem about this though, sorry, Sabi, is that his pinnacle moment for proving
this, his visual evidence for this was a lie. And if he didn't do that, that video would
have been totally fine. But he based all of this and then his evidence provided to that
was the desert. It wasn't true. And that's the issue, man. Like you can't, you can't
make a big takedown video like that and then base it on a bullshit claim. The people in
the public will believe it though. Like people are just going to believe shit like
that. That's what they do. The internet doesn't give a shit about digging. I care
about that though. And that's why I called it out because I'm like, that's, that's bullshit.
Here's the desert because people were piling into my channel. They're like, the desert's empty,
the desert's empty, desert's empty. And I was like, okay, let's go over there. And they were like,
wait, the desert's not empty. And I was like, no, no, it's not. And they were like, oh,
that was like a whole week after that narc video. That's why I had to make that video
because I was like, Jesus Christ, this, this shouldn't continue forever, dude.
Yeah. And I think that's the biggest problem, dude. And that's why I was like,
Like this sucks, like this, don't do this.
Don't lie about this shit.
Yeah.
Yeah, he could have picked any kind of shit
to bitch about for the game, and it would have been fine.
But he picked that, and it was just weird.
And they released the Scorpion.
What about the Scorpion?
What?
Yeah.
He didn't even bother posting an AOC news section?
I know, dude.
I know he didn't.
Oh yeah, Narko Lee was on YouTube a long time ago.
That's true.
How did Camelot and Chained outlive Ash's beyond me?
I have no idea.
Any tips for getting better at MS Paint?
Bro, do you know why I got good at MS Paint?
Of like drawing words in shit at MS Paint?
Cause I used to have to do that shit at work.
Cause I found if I was giving a presentation,
if I drew boxes and shit, people paid more attention.
There's people that like can't pay attention
unless they have a visual indicator.
By the way, hey, look at this.
Look, it's old school Rinscape.
Look up there.
Look at it.
Just look at it.
You know, the same effects, exact same shit.
That's why I draw on MSP.
Do you get it though?
Oh my God.
It's the keys.
Yeah, dude.
No XP waste.
I got like two hits on that crab.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean, like that's, that's why I do it.
Cause like it helps people to pay attention, man.
Yeah.
The game is dead.
Ashes is done.
It's over.
And, uh, I would be surprised if Valve didn't do refunds on this one.
I'd be really surprised.
I think RuneScape is a subway server thing. No, I actually just like playing RuneScape and I just put it up there because now it's subway servers, which is funny.
Yeah. Ashes is Jove. Yeah.
Told you there's a key iron in the safe. True.
Yeah, I think overall the way that I feel about this is this dude, like, Ashes has turned to shit since about March 2025.
It's about March 2025, which is three months after I think maybe even April 2025 is when
that started and stuff started to go sideways and I've been calling them out since then.
And I really liked the start of this phase.
I thought the start of this phase was very fun.
And then after the start of this phase, after about level 10, it turned back into the
same shit that was broken sucks that us who invested early won't get a refund.
Bro, I bought the game in 2021.
I'm not getting shit back.
I'm getting shit.
Yeah.
When did the board come into play?
According to a developer that I talked to,
one of the employees,
the board was implemented six months ago.
Take that with a grain of salt.
That is an inside source.
That is not public information.
And because of that,
I have no way to verify their claim.
But that is what I have been told.
MSP was the keys the whole time.
It's true.
figured it out. Yeah, board into an instant destruction of the company 100%. Did the creditors
impose a board in early 2025? Not that I've seen. There was no public statements of a
board. In fact, there was a statement to the contrary, which is that Stephen does not
have a board to answer to. He will never have a board to answer to. It's just him.
And he's the last buck. The buck stops with him. You never bought the game. Well,
now you don't get a chance to maybe the five gifted sums. Very nice. Do you think
they paid people money to push it on steam launch day?
Do you think they paid people money to push it on steam?
What do you mean?
Like advertisers?
Well, I'm going to be honest with you.
Um, their advertising team is five people.
So I think they probably paid five people's worth of marketing there and
relied on content creators that actually liked the game like me.
And that was about it.
Like streamers? Yeah, no, they never paid me. I never got a single dime from them. Nope. Not one dime, my dude.
Let's not devolve into fabricating accusations. Yeah, people will do that. I think it's really easy because like, you're pattern seeking, right?
You're looking for a pattern. You're trying to make sense of it. And some of those patterns make it look like malicious action.
Some of this does look malicious to me too, but it's only because we have the
information to kind of back it up. Give an example. Let's go to Ashes of Creation
Kickstarter. On the Ashes of Creation Kickstarter, if we go to the very, very,
very bottom of this, you'll see that they have a section here called These
Are Promises to You. And the second one is, in the case that Ashes of
creation does not launch, specifically launch. We promise to refund all backers
in full. This is technically a launch. It's a launch into early access. Does that
count? And if it does, did the team know, which is why the launch was so shit and so
scuffed that they were like we got to fulfill that promise launch it that's
the only one that I can look at and go that looks malicious does that make
sense to me that one looks malicious whether it is or not I don't know but
it looks malicious that looks really bad dude yeah yeah it sounds like a board
decision. It's the board in the room with us right now. What the hell are they? Yeah. Show
me a slate and arrow keys. Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot of people know you can do that. Pull
this over here. Click anywhere on the screen. Grab this. Put it there. And now watch
this. Is it that? There we go. You can use the arrow keys in your keyboard. Hold on spacebar.
And you have an Etch-a-Sketch. Etch-a-Sketch.
edge.
I need it. Yeah.
You can't shake it through a race. Actually, you can do this.
Wow, it works.
It's so dumb, dude.
This is the true board. Oh, God damn it.
Is that another picture of Plank from Ed and Eddie?
I'm out.
Yeah, I'm mad about this.
I'm gonna be super honest with you.
I'm mad about it for a couple of reasons.
I went to bat for them for a number of times over the years,
getting rid of the misinformation,
showing off the game,
talking about development process.
And in the last year,
they fumbled all of that in such a spectacular fashion
that I don't trust them anymore.
And I said that directly to Steven and to Margaret,
four days ago, I told them I don't trust them
and I quit the game.
And I was very explicit about that.
I took screenshots of that entire conversation.
I haven't decided if I want to put that out yet
because I don't think it adds anything to it.
But the reason why I did it, the reason why I quit
is because they were not moderating our server.
We had people that were running around praising Hitler
saying that they wanted to kill LGBT people
to encourage others to get into groups to do so. We had people that were saying anti-Semitic
shit in chat all day. We had people that were doing personal attacks and doxing on our server,
and they didn't ban any of those people. And when I brought this to Stephen and Margaret,
their direct response was that it is policy to not ban those people. Instead, they want to
course correct them through warnings. Kill LGBT people, not their characters.
Yeah, that's the shit that they were writing and we have screenshots of all of those messages
I've sent out some of those to our discord. I will not show them on stream. I'll get banned
So like
When that happened and when I got the official response from them and they said that was the policy
I quit the game. That was four days ago. That was on the 28th of last month. I
Just couldn't do it. I was like, that's you're fucked like I'm out
I'm not I don't want to deal with that at all and I just think that's a horrible that's a horrible direction to go
It's policy not bad those people. Yeah, dude. Yeah, let me actually let me actually pull this up
The actual pirates quote we want to give people a chance to course correct before we move to irreversible actions and
quote
That was the quote
You want to you want to give a person a chance to course correct?
when they're running around in global for two weeks saying they're trying to form
groups to kill LGBT people bro like you can't actually be that stupid that's
that's insane shit that makes no sense yeah for for real and like in our
discord our guild discord I put out even one of the quotes of this let me see
they can actually cut this up if there's a way to do this
Yeah, this guy said looking for a few good men to take the fight to the LGBT community
And then later he was talking about killing LGBT people like it's just like that dude never got banned. He did that for weeks
like
He did that for weeks dude, like it's just like what the hell is going on like how are you allowing this? Oh
Yeah, no, they had people that were praising Hitler too. Yeah, which is illegal in Germany. That's true. We got ads are gonna wait
Discord for ban of that. Yeah, no, it's bad. It's like insanely bad
Sounds like keeping people in the game
Had more priority than keeping it clean. Yes
He also didn't get suspended didn't get suspended didn't get banned no timeouts no nothing
We actually watch these players continue to play the game six to eight hours a day
That's it we just got to see it dude
And I think that's horrific man. I think it's horrific. It's no place in games
Technically we're all permaband now. That's true. That's true
Yeah, that one guy who's screaming about Jewish people the whole time he was yeah, there was a guy who's doing it
What game band is an irreversible action dude, I don't it's just Corpo speak shit
MOs are hotspot for radicalization and game companies should be doing everything to stop
it. They already do. Just ashes didn't, man. And I can't, I just can't deal with that.
That is the bad problem to make. Check your email. Why did you send me a weird
email. Bro, it's so strange. Let me see this. If you sent me a PDF, I'm not opening this.
The problem, the problem with this, your email may be real.
That messaging may be real, but I don't have any proof.
Does that make sense?
Just another guy?
We've got to, ads are over.
Yeah, I checked my email.
Just another guy sent me an email.
It is a screenshot of an email sent to a team member at Intrepid, but this could
be real, but I don't have any proof of that. If it is real, it fits very neatly into this
situation and shows how actually horrific and shitty it is for the employees. If it is not real,
it's complete misinformation I don't want on the internet. That's the problem, and I don't have
a way to determine if it is real or not. Does that make sense? I don't think you're a bad
person for sending it to me, and I don't think you're a fraud, but I can't prove what you've
said. Does that make sense? To be an email back we can discuss more. There's nothing
that we could discuss that would prove this here outside of like, I don't even know at
that point, right? Like there'd have to be some kind of proof that you could do, but
there's nothing that I can do that would prove here. And it's not about knowing
you well enough. I really like the phrase trust but verify. I trust that you tell
me the truth but I can't verify your claim and knowing you being friendly with you would not
help me to verify that claim. I need verification here and there's nothing to verify with. Does
that make sense? That's how I always operate on this shit. Yeah, all of that is actually an IRC.
It is. You can actually connect to Twitch over IRC. It's kind of funny.
You have to give consequences to actually have incentives, of course, correct, correct.
That's exactly it. Are you in the board? No, dude. What the hell? The board. Wasn't
Steven the board? As per the filings for their company, they actually didn't have a board
outside of Steven. So if there was a board that was formed, which is what the employee
to talk to me as said, still can't confirm their claim either. That was never explained to community,
ever. Literally never at all. And I think that's outrageous, honestly. If they added a board six
months ago like that employee claimed, no one was informed. Yeah. Sounds like a hostile takeover.
You can't have a hostile takeover unless you sell more than 50% of your stock.
As far as I can tell, they only had 10% out. I think it was like 9.6. So that doesn't make any sense either.
How do you hostile takeover from 9% of the company? That doesn't make any goddamn sense.
You just be like, cool, your opinion is noted.
Why thank you, right?
I can't believe we had a hostile takeover from a guy with one share.
You know, like, that doesn't work that way.
A smorgasbord was a smorgasbord was might have been related to financing, but again,
we don't really know.
That's the problem.
We don't really know.
You could approach private owners without letting the other owners know he was the owner.
That was the problem.
So when you say approach private owners, there was no others.
It was him and his alleged husband.
And that's it.
Which makes all of this even funnier.
I think that is the thing that's wild to me.
If Stephen Sharif is actually married to John Moore,
who is the CFO, if that is true,
then the statements that I sent up to them
of players saying that they wanted to kill
LGBT people in the community,
and those players not being banned for those messages
become even more insane.
Like that becomes even more insane.
Like, crab. Yeah, I'm slapping the crab. I am.
Yep. They're married for cover up. Dude, I'm going to tell you this right now.
There were actually people that have been talking about them,
those two being married since nine years ago on Reddit.
I don't know if it's true, but people have been talking about that for a very long time.
I have no idea. Yeah, no clue.
And it's not really relevant to any of this at all.
But it is...ironic.
It's kind of relevant and ironic sense because if they are,
and they didn't ban people for saying that the video game is wild.
Yeah.
You gotta understand these people don't have morals and money as king.
I think that's easy to say and hard to prove.
I think it is more likely that Steven actually had a vision for a cool game.
It is more likely that he really believed in that vision
and had no idea how to achieve it and fumbled the shit out of it.
And now we're at the end of it.
And they've done a lot of really sketchy shit to get there.
I think the only part that I could attribute to malice or potential malice
is specifically the Kickstarter tie-in with the launch on Steam.
That's it.
That's the only piece that I can truly attribute to malice.
Everything else is just stupid.
Everything else is just dumb shit.
Does that make sense?
One of the good things is the knowledge from the game systems. We'll now go to other new
games. Well, here's the problem. Which knowledge of game systems will do that? The profession
system was a joke. It was shit to play. It was actually terrible, right? Hated that.
None of that was fun or good. The gathering system was only fun because we knew it
from New World, and that was great.
Fishing was just an AFK system.
Sport fishing was a direct one-to-one copy from Arcage
with no changes or iteration.
What have they added to the world?
The only thing they've really, truly added to the world
is the meshing server system
and all of the assets that were generated,
and those will likely be carved up and sold
as Unreal Engine assets.
The node system could be cool, yeah,
never fully realized, but yeah.
The caravan system, another thing from Arcage,
Wasn't really a lot of difference there.
Why'd you play it for so long?
Because it was really good up until early 2025.
It was moving in the right direction.
They would make claims of, Hey, we're going to do this.
And then they would do it.
And then about March, 2025, they just stopped doing it, but they kept making
claims. Does that make sense?
And I came back and played it again.
And I was like, Oh shit, you guys implemented a bunch of cool shit for
about level one to eight.
All the questing system is there.
That's great.
And then we got past that.
I got to the end game and I was like, everything is broken.
and it's broken in the exact same way that we reported a year ago. What the hell is going on?
And then it all fell apart. Does that make sense? It was easy to get involved with it because the
early was good. Yeah. You miss our cage? You love the character creator? I heard it was incredibly
paid-a-win. Yeah, like incredibly paid-a-win. We got radio silence for that too. We did. We did.
The note system was copied from an MMO called Vanguard that was closed by SOE.
I can't verify that. I don't know. I'll have to look into it.
They pushed the scene as last money grab. No, that one I can attribute a little,
like that one looks like malice to me. And I showed it off earlier. Did I close that page?
I may have closed that. Let's see. There we go. So this one says,
in the case that Ashes of Creation does not launch, we promised to refund all backers
in full on their Kickstarter. It launched on steam in early access.
That to me looks like it counts as a launch.
And as such, they would not have the financial requirement
of refunding on Kickstarter. That looks like a scam to me, legitimately.
So that looks like a scam. That looks like malice.
And that sounds like a thing that a lawyer has to unravel.
Does that make sense?
It does kind of as a launch, I've looked into it.
I mean, lawyers need to look into that.
We could look into it,
but it's just conjecture until the court gets it, right?
Yeah.
Now the steam launch makes sense.
Yes.
It fits neatly into our idea of how this has played out.
It fits neatly into their overall strategy
and it feels like a scam.
It looks like a scam, it feels like a scam,
it's probably a scam, dude.
Yeah.
Besides that one, for sure.
Or court.
How many of us need to ask for a refund
for Steam to get them to look at it?
I don't know.
I'm gonna put out some messaging on Twitter though.
I've already put out one.
I just think that's it.
But I do think that this looks like malice.
Let me put this up.
I'll probably rewrite this, but we're going to write it up.
Yeah.
Allegedly a scam?
No, I said feels.
Feels is important.
I didn't say it's a scam.
I said it feels like a scam.
I don't know words.
I don't know words, bud.
There's a reason I say feels.
I don't know words, bud.
There's a reason I say feels.
Ascrication just launched into really access and steam.
fumbled throughout that and received very little support while most patches
exploded and back there had to be undone. I'm gonna say reverted. Isn't this game
like 50 bucks too? Yeah it is. A lot of us paid a lot more early on. Does backers
include all the people who did alpha keys? Nope. It doesn't.
So no refund for really investors and backers noted I bought the game in 2021 or $375. I'm not getting that back. I know I'm not getting that back. You know, that's that's never going to happen.
All Stephen did was lose money if you go based on the cost. Yeah, that's true. Yes, 375 at
the time. That was for all of the future, all of the everything, everything like tons
of cosmetics, none of those got delivered. Absolutely nothing. They didn't give you
half the stuff you bought. They didn't give me any of the stuff I bought. In fact, even
the character name, the character name thing for that didn't get bought or didn't
didn't get delivered. I actually had to go to Stephen every phase and be like,
somebody stole my character name again because they were trying to troll as me and he had to
manually go into the database and like undo it like he did it. He went into the database
and removed that character and said, hey, try it now.
There was no name reservation. Did they read the ferrets again? Nope. That never happened.
It'll take more than three hours to hot fix the situation though, bro. It'll take three
hours. Then they'll have it up for 20 minutes and then it'll take two hours to
So on on hot fix it. Yeah.
Show back, try this and it didn't happen.
It's saying something about Ash's creation to ton today on the stream.
And there's one thing I can find that genuinely feels like a complete scam.
On the kickstart of the game says on this kickstart of the game, it says,
and finally in the case that Ash's creation does not launch,
we promise full to refund the backers in full. We're going to grab that.
We're going to put this here.
Say Ash's creation just launched an early access on steam.
It's fumbled throughout that and received very little support while most
That just exploded on impact and had to be reverted.
Mmm, experience after around level 8 to 10.
Yeah, does this launch count as a completion of that requirement on Kickstarter?
If so, then all of the backers are shit out of luck.
Well, let's see, let's actually just get rid of this, because that just opens up
other conversation that has nothing to do with this.
As a creation, just launching early access on Steam, does this launch count as completion
of that requirement on Kickstarter?
so than all the backers who should have a look.
There we go.
There we go.
I don't think we could put that up there.
That's what I've just launched to recently launched.
Ah, true.
recently quote launched into early access and steam.
Yeah, there we go.
We talked about Ash's creation a ton today on stream
and the following situation feels like genuine malice.
On Kickstarter for the game, it says,
finally in the case the Ash's creation does not launch,
we promise to refund all backers in full.
Ash's creation just launched into early access
or Ash's creation recently launched, I said just
because it's still in my head.
And the early access and steam does this launch
count as completion of that requirement on Kickstarter?
If so, then the backers are shit out of luck.
One guy leaves everything and then he goes to hell.
He's the game director.
This was his whole vision.
He bankrolled it himself.
At least that's what we were led to believe.
There we go.
We'll put that out.
You guys can have this now.
Say explicitly the game is shut down.
It has not shut down.
You can still play it.
It is dead though.
It's in all ways.
Like basically it's all over, but the crying dude.
How do they take over Stevens power the board? We have no idea. We're never informed
Yeah
Yep
Aaron pretty much PVP
Tell you till they are naked and that's fine
Yeah, nobody knows nobody knows who the hell the board is nobody has any companies are whacked. They're not though, dude
Like I'm the CEO of my corporation
That's how I was able to hire all the mods and everything and give them benefits.
Do you know how I did that?
I made it an S corporation and there's no shares for anyone.
I ate them.
That's it.
They sit in a safe in a bank.
There's a single stock paper that is a physical representation of those shares and it sits
in a bank vault.
No one may have them.
They were applied to me, legally.
That's how you fix this.
You just don't have a hostile takeover,
because no one came.
For working for the board confirmed,
God damn it, I am the board.
It's just very funny.
It's a wig, you're a wig.
What happens if someone gets the paper?
There's like a legal process for it.
And it's like a whole thing.
I guess they'd have to rob the bank, right?
And even then.
I bet the ferrets will find a way to seal it, probably.
I would remove mentioning malice.
It's implied by asking a question.
It may be implied, but I'm just stating it explicitly.
Because there are people that are like, that's fun.
They won't get it.
The thing that you'll find with me is I'm always going to use more words.
And the reason why I'm going to use more words is because I find that people don't
understand shit unless you explain the entire thing completely.
If you half explain it or you just throw up an emotional statement of shit pad,
like you'll get a lot of views on it, but they're like,
they're people that just don't give a shit anyway. So it doesn't matter.
Cause why hate the whole idea of like people typing in my chat with like three
words and they're like, I'm paying per word kind of behavior, right?
Like just don't tick tock your words out to actually explain yourself.
He's rich, but even this endeavor would have been crushing him alone.
Potentially, potentially it could have
Beans soup. You're beans soup.
Paper axolotl. Hell yeah.
I love you as three words. Not enough. Use more.
You're the board. I stopped sending me pictures of boards. I swear to God.
This is just sad. It is. It is.
I think the thing that pisses me off, man, is like I have been giving them feedback for five years.
And in the last year, they stopped listening, they imploded, and now they've closed the company.
And four days ago, I quit the game because of their lack of moderation.
And I was very, very explicit with them about that.
Very explicit with it.
Monopoly board equals Best Board.
What are your thoughts on the Church of the Malt?
Jesus Christ, dude.
Dude, I think it's a bunch of LLMs, LARPing.
It's like any chatbot thrown together
and interacting with any of the chatbots.
They're not AGI, man.
You think this is planned?
The only part about that feels planned to me is this one.
The rest of it just feels like a failure,
failure to actually manage a team.
Because if you look at this,
I go click my crab, let's see.
Crab, it's the exp wasting.
It says, and finally in the case
that Ash's creation does not launch,
we promised to refund all backers in full.
And if you look at this right here,
they launched on steam.
So does that launch fulfill this?
And if it does fulfill this,
those backers are screwed, right?
And if it doesn't fulfill this,
then the backers could get a refund, potentially.
That's the big thing for that.
So like, I'm, that feels planned to me.
It feels planned.
I don't know if it is, but it feels planned
because we had no indication they would ever launch
on steam, ever.
And then they just did it out of the blue, you know?
Chronos with a tier three sub, excuse me,
I've come to enjoy ARC.
Nothing possibly could have happened overnight, right?
Yeah, nothing, nothing at all.
It's just dead.
It's just dead.
There were better marketing than actually developing games.
Yes, I can agree with you on that.
And the reason I can agree with you on that
is because of their team breakdown,
which we got from LinkedIn.
That shit doesn't make any sense.
You can't, you can't make an MMO
with nine quality assurance members
and 205 employees overall, 206 employees overall.
That doesn't make any goddamn sense.
That's what, what are you doing?
My brother in Christ, like what are you doing?
Yeah, it doesn't, that doesn't make any sense.
Yup.
Yup.
101 artists and designers.
Support fishing forever.
Jesus, dude.
We need 1500 trees to make a bow.
True.
Sadly, the stream feels like a wake.
wake. I think it's a good thing to have them in. It's 101 arts and design. So they put designers
together in that one spot. It's like game designers as well. That's a lot though. That's
way too many. Legitimately so. Like if you're, if you only have nine QA staff for 101 developers,
it's not even 101 developers. It's 166 developers because you have all of engineering, you have
all of arts and design and then 9 QA staff to support them. That's a shit show. That's
a shit show, dude. You can't do that.
Why do you need engineering in a game development company? How do you think the servers reform?
You always need engineering. Engineering is for building tools. It's for managing servers.
It's for building out their mesh systems. Like all of that is engineering. Hardware
has to exist and it has to be maintained and managed. You need engineering. Yeah,
It's all for backend, for the servers, for the infrastructure, for all that, man.
Engineering is everywhere, everywhere.
A lot of people don't realize that there's a whole business behind a game.
It's not just the devs.
It could also be software engineering too.
Performance related shit, all of that.
You didn't think about that thing?
Yeah, there's a lot, man.
Even managing the databases, that's a whole thing.
That's an engineering job.
No engineering, no game.
True.
We're an email posted in the AP disc.
Okay, so that's the second time this has been posted now.
Okay, now we have confirmation that email is real.
One moment.
Give me a sec.
Hold this up.
Yeah, we've gotten multiple of these now.
I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable showing this off.
One sec.
It's exactly the same as in multiple emails.
And somebody was posting this.
I think they may have been an employee.
The person was contacting me, but I had no way of verifying their claim.
I have a little bit more way of verifying this,
but now to understand this could still be fake.
This could still be fake.
I'm reading through it now.
Yeah, here we go.
All right.
So this is the email that has been sent over.
And this could still be fake.
We don't know.
God, that is like long.
Who takes pictures like this?
Make sure no one gets in trouble for you showing it.
This is actually posted live on our Discord.
People are leaking it all over the place now.
It's difficult message to send and we recognize how unsettling it may be to receive.
Due to the company's current financial condition, Intrepid Studios is providing this notice pursuant
to the Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification, the WARN Act.
This notice is being issued to all employees as a precautionary measure, while the company
evaluates next steps.
At this time, no final decisions have been made regarding which positions may
be impacted.
A portion of the team may be asked to continue working as the company evaluates
operational and financial alternatives. Others may be affected by a reduction in force and the
company is unable to move forward in its current form. Employees who are impacted will be notified
directly with additional information. With respect to compensation, payroll scheduled for February
1st, 2026 cannot be processed at this time due to the company's current financial condition.
The company is reviewing its obligations and options and will share updates as soon as possible.
Regarding benefits, company-sponsored health insurance coverage may be affected by changes
in employment status. Information regarding benefit continuation options, including COBRA,
is expected to be provided by the Plant Administrator early next week. That information may include
important timing considerations, and we encourage you to review it carefully once received.
Any available options, costs, and deadlines will be outlined directly by the Plant Administrator.
We know this communication creates uncertainty and concern, especially for you and your families.
While we're limited in what we can do or share to commit at this time, we wanted to communicate as promptly and transparently as possible.
We will provide additional information as decisions are made and circumstances evolve.
Thank you for the work, dedication and care you've given to the studio and to Ashes of Creation.
We recognize how difficult this moment is and do not take it lightly.
I'm going to tell you this right now.
The idea of not paying staff is wild.
That is completely wild.
That's the most corporate corporate.
The only reason I believe this
is because it's perfect Corpo.
Yeah, no, it's super legal.
We're gonna have a serious problem.
Right, if we're gonna add the figure,
we've gotten like six copies of this with different formats.
Different employees are coming forward with it.
So I feel more comfortable showing off.
Yeah, it's, if this is inaccurate,
unless it's like a really coordinated bullshit,
it seems real.
Yeah.
That's grim, dude.
You mean the email text?
What do you mean the email text?
I'd have to write it up.
It's just an image.
Oh, you mean the text is AI generated?
That's what you mean.
Okay, not the image.
That's why I was confused.
You saying the text is AI generated?
It could be.
It absolutely could be.
I wouldn't see why not, you know.
Doesn't matter if it gets a-generated.
Yeah, no, it doesn't matter if it's a-generated text.
That doesn't really matter to be real with you.
What matters is this.
Let's go look at this first, right?
IntrepidStudios.com.
That's actually Intrepid Studios.
And that right there, I have another picture of this
in a better spot. Let's see if it's real. That is nihil dissit. We pull it up. Nihil dissit.
Let's see if that person is real. Is a Latin legal term meaning he says nothing, referring
to a scenario where a defendant fails to file a timely answer. So it's a Latin phrase
where he says nothing. That's not a real person. So is this a fake? Or is this their company
legal team? And that's the internal name. Don't know. And that's the problem, right?
That's why you look at this shit. You try to figure it out. I don't know. Don't know.
It might be their do not reply.
Yeah.
Our P email address happens.
Game companies.
Does the mail exist?
Don't know.
I've gotten it from multiple different sources
in multiple different formats.
Oh, Mojang just banned 2B2T.
Is that real?
Jake, is that real?
this is insane that's wild dude that's actually wild band who they banned all
anarchy servers which means to be 2t can't exist anymore that's alright what
the hell is going on today dumb shit
apparently they banned all anarchy servers
i wanna redo let's go back to january first this is stupid
the
the
you
What a train train wreck 2026. Yeah, let's do 2026 over again and the seat sucks
2014 was also nice. I'd go back to that. I'm cool with that. What happens to the employees after
this they get fired. That's what happens. And it looks like they're not getting paid. So
cool cool yeah you'd like a redo of 2025 as well to fix this mess no I want to do that again
that pop into the asset editor and give myself a mohawk for 2026 you goddamn right that's the
way dude question is not if we get bingo it's now to the end of quarter one all right do we
any other questions about ashes? Does anyone have any more questions? At all.
Who is Karen? True. That's a good question. I actually have no idea who that person is. Let me pull it up.
I have no idea who they are.
Karen Borreco.
Karen Borreco.
I don't know who this person is.
Karen Borreco was a co-founder of Vema,
a company that sold dietary supplements.
The company was shut down in 2015
by the FDC for engaging in deceptive practices
and being a pyramid scheme.
And they now own all of Ashes of Creation's debt.
Why?
Because they're not just a company.
They're a company that's a company
that has a lot of money.
Why and who?
Why and who?
So let's go look at that, because that's a bit weird.
So if we go into this and we say you, let me see this, you, two, six, zero, zero,
3, 4, 8, 1, 7, 2, 8, look that up on the internet.
Let's look at that tagline.
That comes up with nothing.
Karen.
What do you, January, interpret it had a hostile takeover by Karen Borreco?
See for yourself the filing.
They're not a publicly traded company.
How do you do a hostile takeover?
That doesn't make any sense.
That's not true.
Yeah, there's no such thing as a hostile takeover.
It's privately traded.
That's not how that works.
They'd have to give it away willingly.
Privately sold shares, you'd have to do that willingly.
That's not hostile, right?
Right?
The hostile way that you do it is you buy out individuals
and then you get 51%.
You'd have to do it through debt restructuring, yeah.
But like that's not, that's not what happened here.
They just gave it to them.
Basically, that appears
that makes me believe
that Steven sold it out to get rid of the debt.
Effectively.
Does that make sense?
Then no money left, then it's all debt.
That would make his statement false, though, that he resigned under protest, and that would
be illegal.
So that seems more unlikely.
What is the way that they got through this?
Who is Karen Borreco?
Who are you?
Who are you?
And where are we finding this?
This is under commercial code database for the UCC search.
Interpret Studios, Inc.
San Diego, UCC search, California.
Do do do do do search for the California Secretary of State in trepid studios
There it is. Yeah. Yeah, that's real look at that
Karen Elborico Scottsdale, California
Deter information in trepid studios, Inc. San Diego and also oh dear
Oh dear, oh dear, that's a lot of debts.
Active, lapsed, lapsed, terminated, lapsed, lapsed, terminated.
There's also a lien in here.
Ashes of Creation, San Diego, California.
Lapsed.
They have a lot of stuff.
Yaya Legacy Trust, so that was a financier.
That's a venture capitalist.
First corporate solutions as representative Sacramento, California.
ASU's done, done dude. It's done. It's over.
First corporate solutions as representative Sacramento, California. I don't know anything about that.
CHTD company, none of them. Employment development department, none of them.
Karen Elbriaco, let me dig into that one.
Debtor name, debtor address, I'm not going to show that on the stream, debtor name Sharif
Stephen and it does not say the amount.
Yup, secured party name is Borico Carinel.
So they owe a shitload of money to this one specific person, not a company, to this person.
The debt is owned by them.
And they were a scammer.
I don't know what to do with that.
I'm going to be honest with you.
That's weird.
but I don't know what that means.
Does that make sense?
Private venture capital?
Let me show you what I got from us.
I need to hide this section though,
because it's got addresses and shit on it.
So if you go in here and you look at this,
you've got Karen Elboriego, right?
And if we look up Karen Elboriego on the internets,
you get one person, really unique name, right?
They were the co-founder of Vema,
Which is a company that sold dietary supplements and the company was shut down in 2015 by the
FTC for engaging in deceptive practices and being a pyramid scheme.
So MLM is what that is.
Yeah, and we can pull it up on Wikipedia even.
Seriously, Wikipedia.
Vema, nutrition company, was a privately held multi-level marketing company that sold
dietary supplements.
Company was shut down in 2015 by the FTC for engaging deceptive business practices and being a
appearance game. We look in here and we look for Karen. Yeah, company based in Tempe, Arizona,
was founded in 2004 by Benson K. Lauren and Karen Boriego. Karen Boriego.
If that is the same Karen Boriego.
if that is the same Karen Barriaco. It's a very unique name, so it's kind of hard for it to not be.
But that's, that's a stinky smell is what that is. That smells, right? Stephen Shreve was also
involved in MLM, MLM says no surprise. I heard that. I heard there was Thai step,
but I never knew of any information around it. Yeah, this is not good. That's not good.
that smells. Court filings and public filings, or court documents, public filings show a bit
of a different story. In reality, there were external creditors involved even before the
game's Kickstarter scamping. It appeared that Yael Legacy Trust, through an investor named Jason
Caramanus, had entered into financing agreements within Trepid Studios before
the Kickstarter ever launched. Eventually, one of these financial agreements seems to have
to have converted into equity ownership.
Over time, this ownership transitioned into,
you didn't finish your statement.
Here's the thing though, if that's the case,
make sure that I'm still killing a crab.
Let's go over to this, pull this back over here,
and we'll grab ashes of creation Kickstarter.
And we'll go into this.
I feel bad for these guys, 5 people gave 10 for me, I feel bad for these guys, 5 people
I feel bad for these guys five people gave $10,000
Search Zango
Mango steam same thing is will low-tech strategy sell Steven. Sure. You sold that drink which was on the line
Okay, was he like an owner or was he like just a dude?
I don't know anything about that that seems like it's going off in a different direction, right?
Well now pirate for this game. No, I actually really liked this game legitimately so
The scam part of it, honestly, we didn't see anything that felt like a scam until middle of
2025
Somewhere around there like March April and kind of beyond that when they stopped really addressing any of the problems in the game
They stopped moving the game forward and it was it was like a huge problem
Like it was a huge problem, dude, and we've been telling it to them ever since I actually quit the game four days ago
and I stopped playing it on
It was the eighth and then I fully quit and uninstalled four days ago after I talked to Stephen Shreve and and Margaret
And I told them that it was what they were doing was insane and then they closed the studio four days later. So
It's tied to the 800k op-ex issue
You think it is chronos that makes sense
Yeah, that makes more sense
How much did you spend on the game? I bought into it in 2021 when the offering was $375
And I'm never getting a refund on that which that sucks, but I also played it for about 3 000 hours. So
So a little bit more than that.
How are you today?
Doing good.
We're kind of tearing apart the whole ashes
of creation shit.
Yeah.
How much money do you the Kickstarter make?
Let's find out.
I wasn't part of the Kickstarter.
I came in after that.
3,271,000 out of 750.
So a lot, quite a lot.
The one thing that I will say to you,
so like everyone will come in and be like,
it's a scam, it's a scam.
Just cause you don't like it doesn't make it a scam.
What feels like a scam to me,
and I will agree with you on, is this.
At the bottom of this list, they have a section in here
that says, and finally in the case
that asset creation does not launch,
we promise to refund all backers in full.
If you go to Steam and you pull up the game,
technically this could be viewed as a launch
into early access, even if it wasn't actually ready
for Steam, which would mean, potentially,
Backers a shit out of luck. That feels like a scam to me. Everything else is just, I didn't like the game, I didn't like the dev team, I didn't like the direction. That feels intentional and feels like malice.
Does that make sense?
nearly a million a week. Seems way off base though.
No, they had 206 employees.
Like let's go and look at their employee break down.
You're like, you don't think they were spending
850,000 a week.
I think they were.
I think legitimately they were.
And here's why.
Look at the employee breakdown.
101 in art and design, 65 in engineering,
six quality assurance.
That's only 206 of their proposed 250 employees.
If you are over indexing that hard
on engineering and design, you are paying out the ass.
Like that's, it makes sense completely,
completely now, how they're paying 850K.
4K a week for employee, yep.
That's not unheard of.
Like when you're talking about designers,
designers are making a lot of money.
Designers are usually around,
if you got juniors, they're probably around 70 to 80.
Your seniors are gonna be 200K.
Who is the shittiest babe?
are and there's only nine of them, which is wild. Oh, the crab shit.
Hey, can I mine it?
I did enough damage mining.
Sick. I got all my, my mining out.
What's the average rate wage? 45, 50 K.
Uh, if you think about it for quality assurance,
it depends when I started in QA, I made 20 K here,
which is nothing.
And in SoCal, that's not even livable.
But that was my starting pay.
It was $10 an hour.
And then,
from there,
most QA would make about 15 to 20 an hour nowadays,
somewhere there.
It's pretty normal,
especially with starting unless you're in leadership.
Yeah.
Depends on where the employee lives.
Holy, holy, that's horrible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't have a good time in AAA.
Only 20 K. Yeah, I made $10 an hour when I started.
I remember one of my bonuses that I had
because they did like yearly upgrades
and I got two cents an hour more.
And that was cool.
Yeah, Curious Religion specific.
I'm speaking of California
because they're based in California.
I used to work in California.
How did you make ends meet?
I didn't.
That's, I relied on my family for housing.
It was really bad.
So, 2015 FTC case directly sanctioned Benson Borieco, Karen's brother.
Hey, let me call you, Cronus.
Let's talk about this.
And we'll pull up that government case real quick.
Ew, calling you.
One moment, I have to fix my audio apparently.
I'd like to see if it was morning or afternoon.
Okay, good.
Welcome, Kronos.
Yeah, so basically what I've been talking about the whole time, I don't know if you've
been here the whole time, I'm chatting about this, but like, now that we can see all
of the components of this and he's claimed that there's a board, were you ever informed
about a board?
No, we've never been informed this board.
We've been under the impression this entire time that Stephen was the person primarily
funding and and doing all this, which is why on my stream a couple of days ago, I was talking
about how I was concerned about Steven's comment about this 800k operating expenses comment
that he kind of made off hand on ready a couple of days ago. And 800 because we did the math
800k a week is an insane amount of money to be spending. It's a lot. That's just
that's just looking at I've seen the breakdown of what the staff looks like, which again
to me didn't make a lot of sense. Having 100 people working on art and then having
I think it was like 65, I think it was for the and yet they say every single time that
server gridding and performance central was their primary focus and making all these tools
for the future was the most important part.
Well, if that's the case, then why would you not have those completely the inverse?
So what I'm seeing here more than anything else, art and design.
So it's not just art.
It's actually their designers to designers that that could be like three designers
that could be 100 designers.
We don't know.
Right.
Yeah.
The one thing that they over indexed on that they just pushed that entirely was all of the assets in the world and building out the different environments.
Everything else was a shit show, but they kept expanding the map, right?
So 101, 101 employees in that area makes sense.
49% of the whole headcount, 65 in engineering, because they were trying to work on server meshing, trying to work with the servers, infrastructure stuff, trying to push that direction for that.
That makes sense.
Where it breaks down for me, nine quality assurance, man.
Bro, what?
I think that might be a translation issue. I think that nine is the German as in there's
no quality assurance team. That's a lot.
Yeah. I think, I think the thing just blows me away about this is like, this is not a
normal mega. Normally the makeup that you're going to have on average is between one and
two QA personnel per in per developer on average, not one 10th, not one 10th of one.
The other thing I was pointing out on stream is that you have to remember that all of these
jobs that they are doing, the majority of them are California and Los Angeles focus.
You are paying maybe 250% what you might pay somebody remotely in the mainland US to be
doing.
Yeah.
Yep.
And that's why I think that if they're going to have had to have bring in venture
capital support, we understand that Stephen put in, I think it's like 90 million.
I think was the number that I remember vaguely.
Yep.
If you're spending 800k a week, you're going to burn through that 90 million.
Disgustingly quickly, and that's only operating expenses. That's not including any kind of capital expenditure like investing in you know server infrastructure
Investing actual hardware, you know the machines all of all that kind of stuff that goes into it as well
So actually that 90 million could disappear in two years
We've been playing for 18 months in alpha phase two. So the game has been going for a while
Now all of a sudden the stuff that I was saying around it doesn't make sense to me to be launching on steam
Now it makes sense that missing piece of the puzzle really falls into place
That's why I was talking about this too is like if we go and look at this
I put this tweet out and said we talked about Ash's and Christian's turn today on stream in the following situation feels like genuine malice on
The Kickstarter for the game
It says and finally in the case that Ash creation does not launch
We promised to refund all backers in full Ash's creation recently launched into early access on steam
Does this launch count as a completion of that requirement on Kickstarter?
If so, then the backers are shit out of luck. That feels I've had so many DMs asking exactly that question this morning
it feels really
If it does, I mean ultimately there's no terms of conditions asterisk on the original kickstart
There's no defining what a launch is so it was always it always would come down to a discussion
You could have made me you could make the
Discussion basically that they've got a launcher and that you can launch the game and you can play it even in the first test
Phase then the game was launched in some way. I
I think it's going to be a it's not a case I would want to argue in a courtroom because
it's very anti-consumer, but they could probably make the bullshit legal argument on the corporate
level that they have launched it, even at the stage when they done it before they wanted
to steam.
Doing it on steam makes basically makes look they have a better argument to counter that.
But it still feels rotten.
If they were launching on steam and they knew that they had a board in place,
they knew they were having financial issues, they knew they were spending 800K a week,
they should have been open with people about it.
to launch onto steam and then less than a month later,
the game is being shuttered, that is a problem in my mind.
That's very anti-consumer.
And it looks to me like they did this with that knowledge.
Because if the reason-
Yeah, at least re-knowing it's an option.
Yeah.
If they did this and they ran out of money, right?
And they're like, oh, we can't even pay employees right now,
which is the claim that's being made
and that letter that's been passed on.
If that's real, if it's real,
it looks real, but if it is, right?
Then that means that they knew financially ahead of time,
We're going to launch on steam and if it doesn't work, we're shuttering.
That just ties back into this.
That was one of their, their claims that they had to make.
And if they didn't launch it on steam, if they didn't launch it, then there's a
good chance that they would be called the task to go and refund everybody on
Kickstarter.
And so like I'm, I don't know, like, I don't even feel like that's conspiracy.
I don't think it's tin full hat.
This just feels like not to read it as a tactic.
Yeah.
It's not to read it as a tactic.
And it's not even, it's not even like me going like, Oh, I need pieces of
It's like, no, that feels like business, dude.
That feels like you went and went,
hey, what are our actual obligations?
Let's fulfill those obligations and cut rope and get out.
Because the other thing that comes down to this is that
we played January last year.
The game was in quite a good state.
We played hundreds of hours.
You and me, Winky, I really enjoyed it.
March came around and we got phase 2.5 or whatever it was.
That sucked.
It was awful.
Then after phase 2.5 flop, the number was playing.
They launched phase three.
Again wasn't doing particularly well.
Actually they didn't call it phase 3.
They never called it phase 3.
They called it phase 2.5 still.
I could have sworn that we got...
There was no...
Steam was counted as the same phase.
Steam launch was counted as the same phase, man.
They never called it phase 3.
They never did.
Yes, 2.5.
No.
I feel like I recall one between October and December.
December. What was the launch in October?
It was it was phase 2.5 still.
That was 2.5. That was 2.5 again.
Okay. Yes. Okay.
They never changed it to three and they never changed it to beta.
They never made it to beta. Yep. That's why we were like, I was like,
what is this? No, like page 2.5. And I was like,
you mean phase 2.5 again? Like what?
What do you think?
2.5 for the third time. That makes sense.
I won't, I don't know if I want that again. Like, what do you know?
What? It's not shady. It's just weird. Right?
Yeah, I think my view was that with phase 2.5 being as bad as it was in the second phase 2.5 also being bad
There were very few people playing the game
There wasn't a huge amount of progress being made and even developers were getting frustrated that there was new stuff being added and the altered wasn't being fixed
I likely think that this board came into effect sometime around September, maybe August kind of times, August and then hit the ground running in September
That would then track us to why all of those job openings that were available on their website
disappeared in the same day on September the 8th or something like that.
Correct.
I actually talked to one of the devs, spoke on Discord, someone that we know is a dev.
We can't prove their claim, right?
So there's no way that we could prove that it's an inside source and you guys know
how I feel about inside sources.
It came out of somebody's ass, right?
But, um, their claim was that six months ago that board was formed.
It checks out with the timeline, but I have no,
The behavior makes sense.
Yeah.
That's, it's, you know, it's a, a friend told us kind of thing.
It's, you know, not reliable, but also we can use that to kind of
piece together information.
See if it does make sense.
It certainly passes the smell check that six months ago ish, their behavior changed,
you know, August, September and think, and the game started getting this new
phase that we just played on steam was, was better than phase 2.5.
The early game was up to level 10 was great after that everything was shit and I think professions were in it
I mean, that's why I left that review been like this the reason I
That's a yeah
Less of a bad state than the March, but still a bad state and that's
Yeah, I left a giant negative review on steam and explain myself entirely back in January night, right? Yeah
I think the thing that's wild too is like the reason that I ended up quitting wasn't
even because of this because this is fixable.
Like you fix this by giving feedback.
You can give feedback and fix these things.
That's fine.
Yes.
The reason I quit was the moderation.
Moderation was so bad and you saw it too.
People were coming to you.
They were coming to me showing off all the shit that they were seeing in the game.
And we took all that to Steven and Margaret.
And I had a conversation with them directly
and I showed them the screenshots of this shit
and Margaret's response was,
we're not gonna ban those people.
We're gonna give them mornings if we give them mornings
and then we're gonna move on and that's it.
And they were like, heinous shit.
And when I realized that the problem
wasn't them having a lack of staffing,
the problem wasn't them having a lack of support
or not having, you know, not seeing the problems.
The problem was them going,
we want to have a toxic environment.
We think we can fix these people.
I was like, that's a fundamental problem
with you as a person, and I need to leave now.
And I just, I quit the game that day.
We had some concerns, some people in the chat probably
won't remember this or won't have been aware of this.
There were a couple of members of our community
during the phase in January last year who,
because other groups lost to us in PVP,
they decided, no, those other groups decided
they would be fun to docs members of our discord,
you know, to abuse them.
in the official actual, the official asset creation discord, etc. Intrepid were hesitant
to do anything about that even then. We've known since kind of the start of last year
there were some moderation concerns around it. It's one of the reasons why we took a
step back in phase 3.5 where we went on to the EU servers originally for one of the
phases because actually moderation had gotten so poor in certain places. This is a continuation
of that to an insane degree, at least at that situation, people that the people who did the
doxing directly got banned, but the guilds who were making it part of their culture, you know,
had no judgment, no pass down onto them. But this is, I mean, what yeah, the, the, the
take the fight to they thems, the, the claims made about you directly in DMs and shouting
out in global all of it, it's just completely unsustainable. It's not a safe environment
in which to base against community. What they were thinking.
Also, this right here was the message that Margaret sent me.
This is from our DMs, and I said, and she said,
to be transparent about what happened on our end,
we investigated the reports you sent and others submitted.
The messages in question occurred within a very short window,
roughly 15 minutes, which is irrelevant, right?
When you're doing things like praising Hitler
and saying racial slurs, it doesn't matter
how long you're doing that.
You should still be banned.
That's how that goes.
And involved only a handful of posts.
Again, the number is irrelevant.
While some of the language used was inappropriate
unacceptable. Our current moderation framework does not always move directly to permanent
bands for first time offenses of this nature. In many cases, we issue warnings first with
the expectation that behavior can improve if it doesn't, we escalate.
What? Why did she at me that this was a group conversation between myself,
Kronos, a member of the QA staff and Stephen Sharif. So what they were doing
yeah, what they were doing here was if somebody went onto the server and said some insane
shit. Like we actually reported a guy up who's saying that he wanted to go around the server
and get a group together to kill LGBT people. That's what he wanted to do. And he was saying
it for weeks. That guy never got banned. Their way of managing that is to issue a warning.
Like a parent being like, oh no, please, please don't kick the man in the supermarket. Oh no,
don't do that. Don't do that. No, you banned them. You banned them, you idiot. Oh my god.
like what is wrong with you like this the penalty is banning them and then they
can appeal like you don't give them a warning you bend them like this this is
basic shit so when I got this as a response I quit that day that was it I
uninstalled the game I sent out an announcement to your guild I told them
everything that was going on with the things that Margaret had said to me and
I went I don't want to have anything to do with this game anymore that was
it. That was four days ago, dude. So anyway, as you were saying,
Chronos,
I remember reading that and thinking the people that I know
of who have said inappropriate comments from our community, never
got a warning. There are people who for better or for worse have
clapped back when they've been attacked in certain ways. You
know, there are always going to be people who do that. And
when we always have a word with them, if there's a report
to us or someone inside the gives us, Hey, this person got
angry and chat with somebody making fun of them. They said
this horrible thing. We go and have a conversation with them
and say, hey, that's not appropriate.
We can't allow that kind of behavior as our actual pirates.
Please do not do that again, we will remove you.
We're not the game provider.
If they say it's under service breaching comment,
they should be reporting.
If they're a member of our group and they should be action,
that's because that's the safety
around which you play the game.
It's like visiting a country
and then the laws don't get enforced.
You're like, well, I'm just gonna come
and visit this country.
No, you're not.
You're just not gonna go there because it's not safe.
It's that simple.
You say, Silver in YouTube, you said, Griffin,
said, I think a policy is fine for first time offense. A second offense though should
be a permanent ban. I disagree with you on that. And I think there's severity based on
action, right? If you have a person that is creating multiple accounts for weeks and is
just saying disparaging remarks about Jewish people on the server, and they don't get
banned because you just issued them a warning maybe if that even actually happened, right?
That's what we saw on our server. There was a guy who did that every day. I have
like 40 of him on my ignore list in game.
Like there was no warning issue.
And here's the thing is, do you only issue a warning because he never got a
warning before that?
And now the last five weeks of him doing this is the warning.
Or do you just ban the guy because he's doing weird shit that should be
banned?
Moderation always has new ones, you know, but, but, and you have, you have
your own version in the US, but pretty much in most European countries
We have the quality out here in the UK that one's protected characteristics.
You cannot, you cannot abuse somebody for, you know, in the workplace, for example, that
we're breaking the law.
Whether they are black, white, gay, straight, you know, they're tall, short, male, female,
none of those are acceptable reasons to abuse or harass other players.
And that they should by default become a terms of service violation and a ban for
appeal.
It shouldn't be a warning because you'll make, you know, you're abusing someone
for being a woman.
You're abusing them for being white, you're abusing someone for being Jewish.
None of that is okay on any level.
here's the fun part insane here's my favorite part about that look what I have
already circled it's their own to us in which they did not enforce this I already
have slides yeah no dude like they literally did this is what I sent to her
I sent the market I was like you're not following your own to us dude what are
you doing and and that's it like they weren't following that specific thing of
disparaging, defaming, name-calling, or engaging any form of discrimination against another member
of the community, engaging in any act of sexual misconduct, including when I limit to sexual
innuendos, sharing sexually explicit content, sexually explicit content in user-generated
content or user comments, or making offensive or inappropriate advances or comments to a
member of the community. And you agree to the list of conduct identified as harassment
above is not exhaustive. We reserve the right to determine what constitutes harassment
or soul and exclusive discretion, which means they were not bound to not ban these people
in any way. They could determine that any way that they wanted to. And they chose to keep
those players around because based on her statements, they thought they could fix these
people. This is literally moderation as I can fix them. That's wild, dude. I can't
like this. This is the reason I quit the game because I was like, once I realized I
I was like, oh, this is a problem from the top.
You know what I realized?
That I can't fix them.
And I walked away.
No.
That's...
Yeah, no.
Yeah, it's not how this shit works, dude.
It's wild.
And it's not something that, you know,
it's not something new.
We've raised some of the social and community issues
in ashes for a long time.
So it's not like we never gave them a heads up
or a warning.
It's not like they were never told
that people weren't happy with it.
Everyone in chat has been telling them that then, you know,
then moderation has been poor for a year plus, but it's not new to them.
This is even funnier.
Evan critter and chat just said, as of 10 minutes ago,
that guy is still doing that on our server.
The guy who just disparages Jews every day on our server.
Just, just, yeah, it's still there.
It's gotta be a bot, dude.
It's gotta be bought.
It's gotta be bought.
It's been there for weeks, man.
It's been there since the launch of this phase, dude.
Yep. Same with the, particularly the one poster who was doing the MTLGBT comments, but
also their whole guild has been doing it. There's just nothing being done. At that point,
it's systematic.
You assume there's a moderation team? Well, I mean, maybe get one of the artists or
designers to do it. Got a lot of those.
Maybe that's what the QA has been doing.
It's super weird, dude. Like the memes, memes aside from that, like,
I don't see them actually having a moderation team.
One of the things that we brought up in phase 2.5 in the, in the middle of
2025, as we said, you don't have enough of moderation team.
The game is already having moderation problems.
You need to add a slash reporting feature to the game.
And they responded by saying, yeah, that's something we're working on.
Fun fact, they also said that when I quit the game this last week,
it's the exact same messaging. We're working on that.
We're going to be adding a slash reporting feature. No, you're not.
You would have done that a year ago when we requested it the first time.
You would have done that before that.
You would have done that before you launched on Steam.
It's a trivial addition seeing as you already have a slash bug
that goes into the same kind of reporting flow anyway.
You could literally just reuse the models,
have it go into a different location. You're good to go, man.
Like that's not a difficult ask. That is an easy ask.
And they could never functionally add this,
which is weird dude. On top of this, I'm going to be real with you, right? We currently have 4,200
people over on Twitch. We have another 500 on YouTube. Do you know we have one moderator on
staff right now? It's one moderator in me. That's how this shit works. They are able to manage
all of that for all of you guys spamming stuff at all times because they use tooling to be able
to do it. We have an average of one million unique viewers per month and where one moderator
on staff at any given time can handle that for 12 hours a day. You could take a single person
and have them cover multiple servers at the same time because that mod is covering not just me but also the ferret stream
My stream the YouTube version of the ferret stream and the YouTube version of my stream at the same time and they're managing
Tickets over on discord as well
and they're managing the discord as a single person and you want to tell me that a
250 man team that is spending eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week is unable to have a single moderator
Look at global chat on any of their servers
It's wild blows my mind bullshit. We use systems like chat arena. For example, if you want to
unify chats, you want to open like all the chats in one go, you don't have like, you don't have the
ferret stream and thought stream and my stream and, you know, every other stream open, you can,
you can combine them. You can, there are ways to streamline. So you're only looking at kind
of one, one area, one field, do that for the service and similar, which they could do on
their internal systems, you'd have all of the global chats combined alongside, and you just
like to ban someone when they breach under service done what also you're saying for mods in chat right
out that's because they actually watch the stream the only person who's actually on staff right now I
believe is little ham it's during their shift that is the job and Maggie is in chat because they
switch over and I believe 6am which is in 20 minutes these these people who are the moderators
are employees they're salaried employees they're actually paid entirely on a monthly basis they
get full-time benefits including medical vision dental and therapy and a $50 copay like that's
That's their job, right? So like, when I'm saying there's one guy on staff, one guy doing his job right now, that's their job to do that. And the fact that this company could not manage that is mind boggling to me. I am a streamer. I'm not a multi billion dollar company. I'm not a company that's gotten 90 million in injected funds. I'm a streamer with some moderators that I pay. The fact that we're able to do this more effectively than their corporation could with 250 employees is insanely telling. That is a problem, dude.
Like that's that's wild shit. Yeah
By ashes no dude, it's dead anytime. So we're talking about
Ham is in fact not goat. He's ham. Ham is a little ham. That's true
Yeah, so just shows you do like it shows you that it's not an issue of
Organization and funding. It's an issue of want to do it. They didn't prioritize that and that's it
They didn't prioritize moderation, and that's it.
And you can, that's provably true on that one.
They're submitting my steam refund.
Nobody got the refunds.
It's gonna have to get really bad
for steam to do the refunds.
Like really bad.
I'm not even sure how that works for people.
You know, so we've all obviously got the receipt for free.
So there's no avenue there that we can rely on.
I genuinely would be surprised if there was any avenue
to actually get a refund for this.
Because I do think that, at least from my perspective,
I've got, I think something like two, two and a half thousand hours in the game.
I wouldn't bother starting anything up because I think that, you know,
it's a shame as part of the risk that I took home when I, when I went and
started playing the game, but it's, it's an awful lack of communication.
The thing that annoys me is that actually, if they'd known about this board
six months ago, they'd known about the financial issues before that.
Why didn't they tell us this was an option or a possibility?
We got ads. I'm going to wait in the ads.
Yeah. Waiting on the ads.
You got 400 hours.
I think I've played like 3000.
Yeah
On the bright side, you know big June update on Tuesday means that a completely new end game and a huge amount more content
So I'm gonna be fine. Also white power on YouTube. You didn't need to retract that
I have no intention of playing that. So yeah, no one to be clear
Nobody banned that guy's messages. He just put them in chat and put message retracted
But yeah, I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be playing
Chapter three comes out on Tuesday. Well, oh for Dune. Yeah, we'll be playing
Why would you tell if you have financial issues?
Honestly, you wouldn't generally.
That being said, if you have implemented a board that changes the entire direction of
the game company, you probably should tell people about that.
That seems a little weird.
Yeah.
The key decision maker has changed.
That's something that probably you want people who are backing the game and choosing
to further spend time on the game, et cetera, would probably be made aware of.
I will show you that in a moment, darling.
We've got 45 seconds left on ads.
Let me wait for the ads first and then we'll talk about it
because I actually have some documentation
for that that's gonna help.
I have so many notes.
It's like playing blueprints again.
But it's like who done it?
Who done it?
Ash is a creation.
Where is that filing?
If you have the filing for their company, I think you sent them.
Which I'd probably do, yeah, for me if my browser window is like three times.
It's the one that shows who the board members are.
We have too many tabs.
It's the one that shows their board members.
I had it open earlier.
I don't know where it went.
I can find it.
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,
do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,
All right, we're back from the ads. Welcome back. Yeah, I wait for ads. I don't want to have you missing anything shit
I think that sucks
So Ash is basically a scam read pull this whole time. No, I think it became
Something that appears as a scam to me and I'm using that terminology very carefully because there's legal implications
Declining something as a scam when I look at this and I see this right here on Kickstarter
It lists for the game as saying quote and finally in the case that Ash's creation does not launch
We promised to refund all backers in full and then they launch on steam into early access into a shit show of a build
That feels like it's fulfilling the obligation
So that they don't have to do refunds that feels like a scam. I
Can't say that it's a scam because again legal obligation to that but it feels like a scam to me as a person
It certainly feels dishonest. Yeah, no matter what you would not say these are words scam. Whatever it feels dishonest
I think that's why people are so rightfully angry. Yeah. Yeah, I hope that makes sense and like I can't just go
I'd be like it's a scam or like I can't do that
I can't do that thing because there's there's legal liability for that
I'm just gonna say it feels like malice. It feels like a scam. It feels dishonest feels specifically feels
Yep, I've sent you that filing board. Oh
Oh, thank you. Let me grab it.
It only shows two offices, which is very different from the board.
So for people who aren't necessarily aware on how board works.
There was a PC mist on this.
Oh, that's just the PNG that I was using.
No, I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you. One sec.
I just need to delete everybody's addresses, which are all over this goddamn thing.
Addresses, because I don't want to show them, even if it's a public record.
Let me delete those ones. There's a lot of them.
God damn it. They're everywhere
Yes, intrepid studio is very cool
Okay, we done we get all the addresses. I think it did think cool, but uh, okay. There we go. So you have
Officers listed up here that Steven Sharif and John Moore the claim is that they're married, right? So
That's but that's been claimed going on there back nine years. I don't know if it's true or not no idea
Chief Financial Officer John Moore Steven Sharif chief executive officer and the secretary. These are the officers
directors. The board of directors would be this. This is listed as the board of directors
for the company. The number of vacancies on the board of directors is zero. Stephen Sharif
is the only board of directors employee. Director named Stephen Sharif, which means
if they have a board, it was formed without updating this on a public record. And that's
why we're talking about it.
It's not a director's board. It could be an executive board, which is designed,
which will have things like the CFI, like a chief operations officer on them. They
They would not be directors, you know, owning shares of the company, etc.
And that has not been disclosed to us as employees or as not as employees as, as, um,
like customers.
It was probably, I don't even know if it'd be disclosed to employees.
Would it?
Maybe not.
Maybe it would.
Uh, I don't know.
I don't know.
It's an executive normal.
Yeah.
It would be normal to be in terms of culture.
So you can understand that you're actually making the day to day choices around the
company.
Cause if it's an executive board, it's not a corporate board of directors.
An executive board is just a list of advisors for them.
And that'd be it.
It'd just be a list of advisors for Stephen, effectively.
Yeah.
Bro, Sadi, show me the clip on your claim.
It looks insanely bad.
It does.
It super does.
So there's no listed board of directors.
It's just Stephen.
There's no listed officers outside of this.
So what are you saying?
They're the entire board?
That's not the board.
That's gonna be something else.
board has to have a set, you know, that's not the board because the board is required
by law in the US to have a secretary. So like, there's going to be somebody who's there to
keep the records of it. You're going to have an officer of some kind who's there to keep
minutes record. That has to be somewhere there will be somebody in that board who's
doing that. That's the role that I would expect to see there. If that's not disclosed
last list, that can't be the full board in my understanding of the corporate requirements
and filing in parts of the US.
Yeah. So the thing, the thing that's really interesting about that is you've
You've got Stephen Sharif, you've got John Moore,
you've got Stephen Sharif as the only
board of directors member.
There's no other board that has been communicated
to players in any possible way.
The only board that we could think of at that point
is an executive board, which would not need to be
on paper for the corporation,
but would be advisors to Stephen.
And from there, if they're just advisors to Stephen,
and he's the only one of the board of directors,
how does he lose control to them
as stated in his statement on social media?
That doesn't make any sense.
Like if we come down here to this
and we look at his statement,
I can make a limited statement in my personal capacity
and not on behalf of the company regarding the situation.
Control of the company shifted away from me
and the board began directing actions
that I could not ethically agree with.
How does that happen if it's an executive board?
Because this is the board of directors.
This is who has control on paper.
This is their company and their name.
How does that board pull control
with no legal way to do so.
That's like somebody saying,
stand in your head and you're like,
oh, I guess I will then.
That doesn't make any sense.
Again, could be an investor board.
According to Stephen, there was no investor board
and that he was completely in control
of the entirety of the game and its development process.
That was one of the reasons we invested
it in the first place.
As a community, that's the reason that we got into it.
That's why we wanted it because it was all under Stephen.
And now six months later, that story,
or six months ago, that story changed.
So that's the, that's the, that's sticky is what that is, you know, also please keep chat in English. Uh, if you're putting it in Cyrillic's like that, we can't read it and you're just going to get it deleted. So sounds like the same as a lie. Sounds like it is. Can't prove it. Looks gross. Looks, it smells. I would say it smells. Some about that smells. I want to look into that more.
There's more stuff in here. There's more look into it. See there's things like for example the registered home that Stephen has listed there, which is you know, Stephen's house and shouldn't be shouldn't have been used on a business filing.
That's the dumb thing to do was sold in November right right in November right before the steam launch.
There's also what looks like around 4 million and stat in my outstanding payroll. There's three UCC leans against the company, all of whom will have priority in terms of the company folding up.
There's a lot of weird stuff going on here and I'm wondering if there's something suspicious
around what dates, steam payments come into accounts on, given that they've announced
this obviously overnight on the first of the month.
Let me check my phone.
Because if they were waiting for that steam payment to drop into their accounts first
so they could pay off those outstanding amounts and actually shutter the company effectively,
this looks more like a cash grab than ever before.
Let me go look into this.
in the case because I'm gonna be one of the few people that you guys talk to that can
actually get that data because I release and sell games on steam and I know when they make
their payments I gotta go log into it one moment because that they get a million sales
on steam they're getting 70% of the $50 or so they get $35 per pound you get 35 million
dollars from selling a million copies on paper. Just kind of napkin math. Waiting for that
money to at least be in transit or be dropping before they announced this to me would make
sense from a financial perspective. If I'm thinking with a business brain on, that's
what I would do. Let me see. It's just real shady.
They pay on the 26th to the 29th every month.
So money lands in the account overnight and they announce it first thing.
That's what was starting to look a bit like, yeah, that's why I was like, something smells
in.
Yeah, all our payments are, let's see, 28th, 29th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 26th.
Yeah.
Yeah, they took the money from the steam sales over December as it went into January,
some of the January stuff, and then they've just taken that bag and left. Yeah. Cool.
That's, I'm not going to say that's a rug pull, but that smells like a rug pull.
That's what that smells like. It smells like there's a rug and somebody's pulling on it.
You know. Yeah. Let me keep, let me keep pulling at these little strings.
I think it's an institution.
From a gamers perspective,
would you buy New World or Ashes of Creation?
Well, I have 3,000 hours in Ashes of Creation
over a thousand in New World.
So, both.
That chat member, you should buy Blockbuster stock.
If you choose between those two,
Blockbuster stock is what you're looking for.
That's the way it is.
No, honestly, neither of them.
The one thing that I always told people
whenever we were playing this game,
because people were like,
oh man, he told everyone to buy the game.
I never did that.
What I told people every time is,
do you like social sandbox games?
And if you don't know if you like social sandbox games or not,
you might want to play Albion because it's free.
Do you like the idea of a buggy ass experience? Cause it's an alpha.
There's going to be a shitload of bugs, right? If you like that,
if you're okay with that, then that's cool.
And are you okay with your character being wiped? Because it will be.
And if you answered all three of those with, yeah, you're cool with that.
Then maybe it's for you. That's it. I,
there'd never be a time room like, yeah, buy it. Like that's not,
cause it, I do, I don't know if it's for you. It could be shit.
It could be shit for you. Albion mods or dicks. I don't know much about it.
I just know that it has paid a win should
Killin a crab
You can miss circuit city, dude. I miss radio shake
Radio shack was rad. I
Remember when radio shack went out of business through my house, and I went in there and I bought like everything
I bought so much stuff
Yeah, you're consistent with the recommendation caveat. Yeah, I like trains
If you know you know yeah, I'm polygons. Yes, I do my character
Yeah, I want to go back to the late 1900s when we did the cool S. Yeah.
Rebao C. We know it. Honestly, dude, I think the thing that pisses me off is like they
They started to do really well.
Early 2025, the machine was moving,
the game was putting out really cool updates.
We were talking to the devs,
they were super cool on feedback.
Like everybody was great, it was awesome.
And like that's why I was so invested in the game.
And then like March 2025, something changed.
And like all of it started to go to shit.
Stephen stopped talking to people.
All of it went really weird.
Mark was right along.
No dude, Mark lied about the desert.
God, okay. The biggest problem that I have with that statement, dude,
Nork put out a video where he showed a portion of the desert that was completely false. He literally
went to the edge of the map in an unbuilt area in a pre-release build and then was like,
it's a scam, look at this environment. And then we went there in the live build,
we showed that it was bullshit. And I had to go on on Asmongold stream to prove that live.
And I did. And the thing that was so stupid about that was like,
Narc could have made great points about the culture and structure of the company,
but he based all of it on, look at the visual proof that I have, and then lied.
Like that sucked, man. If he would have not lied about that, it would have gone fine,
but he lied about it. The only thing that in any of Narc's
and the best thing I could actually agree was the communication from Intrepid was poor.
Do you want to know why I think that happened? Do you want to know why I think that happened?
I actually think I understand why suddenly Narc started being treated like shit by the dev team.
Because I went through the same thing.
Interesting.
With...
With Narc, Narc fell out of favor as a content creator, and Stephen stopped talking to him.
He grew bitter about it, and started putting out hate videos about the game.
That led him to make that false claim about the desert.
When I put up that stuff about sport fishing, where I was like, you just directly one
to one copied this from Arcage.
Here's all the deeds to prove it.
Stephen Sharif never said another word to me.
It's been a month and a half.
He didn't respond to any of my messages from then on.
The man let his pride get in front of him and stopped responding to me when I was the largest
streamer for his game.
That is likely the same thing that happened to Nark.
Likely the same thing.
So I understand why Nark would be upset about feeling like there's no communication.
And at that same time, during that time period, I felt like communication was great.
Does that make sense?
Yeah
What nark should have done is not lied about the content should have just talked about that and it would have been fine
But he lied about the content an approvable lie that we showed off and that's just not necessary
Yep
So I hope that makes sense man
Seems like a carriage flung everybody's got him so it works. He's got to be honest about it
There's been like a character doors being too humble. I don't think you're the humblest
I think you're the most humble human being I know.
Imagineable.
Maybe the most humble human being.
I don't wish they were as humble as I was.
Yeah.
Species shit.
Refunds, I think refunds are unlikely.
Based on their financial obligations
and the things they have there
and the specific wording that they put into the Kickstarter
and the fact that we didn't have any refund way
on being early backers outside of this.
I don't think we're getting them.
I don't think that's happening, my dude.
I really don't.
I am the humblest, no one is more humble
and all right dude.
Just sort of about ashes, much sad. It's pretty bad. It's, um,
it's a shit show and we've been going through this all day today.
And I think it's important to go through this because like, dude,
this is awful steam refunds. That one, I think might be possible.
That one to think might be possible because steam does not take kindly to
being used as an abuse tool against players.
Steam is very, very consumer friendly and they get very mad about that
shit. They just need enough people to raise the alarm.
So, go send in support tickets if you want to refund and tell them what's going on because
that valve will not change until they get that and then the valve will be like, no, they
are getting abused.
Screw these people.
They will always take your side as the consumer.
That's what they do.
Valve has always been that way.
They do the same thing when No Man's Sky launched.
When No Man's Sky launched, they had lied completely about all the content of No
Man's Sky originally.
And then, Steam was not issuing refunds.
They refused to issue refunds.
And then enough people brought it up that steam suddenly started issuing refunds for
everybody, even if it was over two hours of getting play.
That was like a big deal.
And now, now they fixed no man's sky, but at the beginning that was, that was the worst
rated game on steam out of all games.
It was wild.
Yeah.
The no man's sky launch was horrible.
Yeah.
They stood, they, they did refunds for that.
They also did refunds for hell of a stew outside of the two hour period because
people lost act.
We're going to lose access.
Yeah.
No man's sky is the best comeback story.
I agree with that.
Yeah.
I like OG No Man's Sky.
No, you didn't.
Yeah, no, you didn't.
Don't lie to me, dude.
OG No Man's Sky.
Do you mean OG No Man's Sky is No Man's Sky before launch when you believe that you'd
be able to interact with your friends and see them in real time in the world, right?
That's OG No Man's Sky.
I really loved OG No Man's Sky when I had a monster look like a potato that fell
through the world and my game crashed and my CPU exploded.
That was a really good time for that game. I think yeah. Yep. Oh
Such a mess dude
Yeah, they'd be real dude. That's like that's my psychoanalysis the situation was Steven
Based on my personal experience and that's it man. Like I just think that I think that that makes the most sense
You see if you went pop now it just overheated a shitload when you're playing in the early game because it was like really badly optimized
basically the greatest iteration of elite that ever was a will be elite anything
what game day before is another example of steam going over the to our mark yes
they do so like all you can do is put in reports for this but in reports that I
see look good on paper bad in development yes here's the problem
though it didn't just look good in paper it looked good for a while while
we were playing like during phase two men like early 2025 we played the game
a shitload. We had 200 guilds running because guilds capped at 50 players. We had 200 simultaneous
guilds running with our community size. We dominated that game, dude. And we had a blast
doing it. We had all kinds of wars and enemies and we owned Halcyon. Like I was the mayor
of Halcyon. It was rad, super rad. And then the devs, every time something went wrong,
they actually had like, like they would do feedback sessions. They would actually
take the feedback, they implement it and the implementation was really fast. It
was like a week of turnaround between like you turning something into them, being
They hate shit sucks and they're like, we're going to fix it and they do it.
And then sometime around March or April, the updates just stopped
and the communication just stopped and it slowly fell away.
And then nothing was happening.
And then for an entire year, nothing really got fixed.
And then they launched on steam.
Turn to shit.
Do you think someone could buy it outright and save it?
Honestly?
No.
No, I don't. I think that the most likely scenario here is that they carve it up and sell it for Unreal Engine Asset Packs. That makes the most sense. Legitimately so.
I mean, I'm trying to work out. When we see they, who are we actually talking about? That's what I'm currently looking into because we just don't know anything here.
here. It looks like it's going to come down to a couple of liens between that Karen Barienko
person that we've seen mentioned and a guy called Jason Caravenas, who holds something like 10 to
15% of it as preferential liens from previous debts. So what you're saying is a Karen killed
ashes of creation? Yes. Yeah. And I rightly could be part of it. But this is why Stephen
even want to sell this house to what could be, you know, for example, a holding company,
because those are personal liens against Stephen. So if the company goes under his assets for
a risk to transfer in those before and thinking about in December makes perfect sense. Now
I look at it.
So he sold his house just before anything went on and he used his home as the actual
business address for the business. So by selling his house, he may not have a
financial obligation for that anymore of that has been collateral. Is that what
I'm not, I'm not entirely down on exactly what happens in this kind of situation, but that is what it would look like. Yeah.
That's what asset moving before you go bankrupt looks like.
Sound. Yeah, it's a little married around. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think it's all the time.
What, again, what it seems like the most to me is you've got a whole bunch of venture capital bullshit going on here.
And what happens in venture capital, they carve it up and they sell it off like the liquidate the company.
They will get rid of every employee. They'll sell all of the hardware. So all the computers will get sold wholesale.
They'll sell everything that isn't nailed down
inside of those offices.
They will get rid of their rent for those offices.
They'll get rid of everything.
And then they will take that money
and they'll split it between themselves,
pat each other in the back and walk away.
Welcome to venture capital.
That's why you shouldn't get involved in it.
Done, right?
And when we're talking about in-game assets,
that stuff gets carved up, sold off to other studios
or turned into asset packs
that are up there for Unreal Engine.
Venture capital, what about refunds to everyone?
Bro, I'm gonna be honest with you.
I don't think we're getting refunds.
And the reason why is this specific line right here.
And finally, in the case of Ashes of Creation does not go to launch, we promise to refund
all the backers in full.
The game is technically launched.
Technically.
There's also the problem.
Technically is the problem.
Yeah.
Under the way that most of these kind of debts work that are filed against the company,
the people who have these liens against it have priority over us bringing a class
action.
If a class action was brought and they knew the debt was found and registered against,
you know, intrepid, that's when we'd be guaranteed to get that money as a class
action.
But that doesn't exist as a debt.
I was anything contractually, whereas they do owe those other five people that are currently filed and they will likely be more of those that get filed
Is it is a Monday a national holiday for you in the US? I don't know when national holidays are
I
Feel like I remember there's a national holiday at some point in start fair, but I could be imagining it
Either way, we'll likely find out tomorrow. We basically between tomorrow and Friday
It looks like our next one is January now. We did January 16th February 20th is Washington through 20th birthday
So I would expect to see things filed on Monday. There'll probably be some related court
file into Monday and Tuesdays. They kind of start trickling out to the wider community
where we see what it looks like. But those liens, those registered debts will have a
priority over any refunds that we would get as consumers.
Chad is saying it's Groundhog days. So what you're saying is tomorrow I have to get
back up and do this again in perpetuity until I die. I love Groundhog days.
It's going to be great dude.
So I would expect there to be more of those debts registered against the company
and then making it less and less likely that any actual player will get any money back.
Yep. Also to be clear, this section from this does not protect us as consumers on steam.
Steam protects us as consumers on steam.
The only way that our refund would ever go through on steam side is that
if you were back on Intrepid's website, you're shit out of luck.
Like straight up shit out of luck.
Like I bought the game in 2021 through a Tripids website.
I'm never getting my money back.
That's never going to happen at all.
Yeah.
Ground hug day, time loop, TTS, can't wait.
Oh God, we got a lot of TTS.
You just sit there.
The people who are calling for a class action
don't understand that class actions only really suit the law firm
who's putting the work in if they win.
And that's it.
Like most class actions, you'll see pennies on the pound, if that.
Yeah.
Do you want a couple of bucks and wait five years for it
and then be like, what the hell is this check?
What is this? And you open up like a dollar and a half. What the hell is that? Or it'll
be some stupid like a dollar and 12 cents. It'll be like, you know, five thousand dollars,
but then legal fees, 4,998 dollars, 17, you're like, Oh, yeah, no, class actions are just
there to punish the company. Generally. You usually don't say a financial return.
Yeah. They're great for law firms. They law firms love a good class action. They
think it's going to win. Makes them loads of money. Like the one against steam
right now. That's ridiculous. That's, it's insane, dude. I called it out immediately. You know, it's
funny too, if someone's like, I can't believe pirate software is being anti-corpo. And I just
linked them a tweet that I put out from 2024, the last time someone tried to do this, this theme,
and it's basically the same wording. Because it was the same claims again. I was like, okay,
buddy, like, it's the same shit. They do this every two years.
I showed you that the company that's being used to file the class action in the UK was
was set up two years ago and hasn't been used for anything other than this
class action. So it's been done with intent. They've been doing this.
It's part of just ongoing BS around Steve.
The way that that works, the merry-go-round is a company will do a hundred,
like 800 million or more lawsuit against themes. So it generates headlines.
They'll make a bunch of bold claims about the business practice that turn out
to be false. And then Tim Sweeney takes that and starts tweeting madness
about this on Twitter to try and rally more people against it in the
public eye. And then it turns out that none of this is true.
Steam gets away scot-free winning by doing nothing. And then
they repeat the process two years later. And they just keep
doing that. I've just been watching this cycle. I was like,
I've seen this episode, man, why is the rerun on ridiculous to
watch?
When it was funny, I have no idea. This time they're trying
to get like the thing that they did this time, which is
really interesting is they're doing it as an opt out class
action in the UK, which means they say this is on behalf of
14 million customer plaintiffs. But those plaintiffs have
to individually opt out, and there's no way to opt out yet.
So that's not actually 14 million people.
It is every steam user in the UK,
unless they tell us not to.
I'm just like, dude, that is outrageous to me, man.
Like, it's just so insane.
That exists, yeah.
That's exactly how this works.
And you have to opt out to their website,
but the section to do it isn't even up yet.
I would declare to everyone that
it's not that hard to bring a lawsuit.
It's just incredibly hard to actually win one.
They could bring one all they want. It doesn't mean anything that the UK is hosting and is open
for this. It's because the UK has reasonably strong anti-competition laws. It doesn't mean they
can all win. Yeah, they're not going to win. They're not going to win because it's the exact
same argument that was made last time, which means that likely Val will be like, hey, you
already did all this in discovery. Here it is again. Do you want to have the same conversation?
I mean, we can if you want, and they'll just do it again. The really funny thing
will be put the legal team over about like, okay, let's dig out the same case as we provided
last time this came up. It's ridiculous. Today's since last anti-competition lawsuit,
I just reset the number now. I'm not trying to be sarcastic. I'm actually genuinely curious.
Are you a Reddit mod bro? No, what? No dude, what the hell? UK lawsuit is obviously backed up by Epic.
I don't think it's backed by, I don't think you make the claim that it's backed by Epic.
You'd have to have a fine, you'd have to find financial tying between the two, right?
and like there's no financial client between it. But there is, Tim Sweeney does have a vested
interest in that lawsuit going forward because he runs a competing platform that is inferior,
which is why they can't actually compete. And it's funny too, because we were like, no epic,
the epic could totally compete. They're really good. Okay, then why aren't they doing well?
Oh, Kosteem is pushing them down. Okay, then why is GOG doing well?
And the whole narrative falls apart. Yeah, that's just how that works.
Then why does the Microsoft store and the game pass system still work and then exists
express to games wise wise that's a lot of love because epic is trying to compete and
they're doing it badly that's it that's all it comes down to gg yeah it's a good platform
gg is guys short for good old games basically do a drm free and they do a lot of our old
games like kind of updated as well as new launches that's you I I rate gg very well
in HIO as well. They're great.
Yes.
Yeah.
I've not used it for a good few months.
Oh, Jonas, that's really weak bait, dude.
That's weak bait, dude.
What is that?
That's weird.
GgStore are also coming to Linux.
It's sweet.
Yeah, Gg is red.
I dig them, dude.
Nice.
I love that.
I love that entirely so.
The only reason that we haven't released
they are in free shit.
I actually did that early for Heartbound on the demo
And we found that third parties were repackaging it with malware and using it against like young kids because our game is like
it's it's good for like younger people because it's a pixel art game. That's kind of cutesy, right and
Kids reading malware from our game and I was like that sucks ass
And I had to stop doing DRM free shit and I haven't done it since and like that's the only thing that stopped me from doing it
Otherwise I'd put it up on GOG. I probably will eventually anyway
Because the game's kind of like matured now and it's got like psychological horror stuff in it
But it was like really cutesy in the beginning so
We've got ads in a moment. They'll pop up.
Gigi also shows your game library in a cute shelf wall.
I have too many games in steam. Yeah. Too many games. You cried with the demo.
You should see the new stuff I put in yesterday. I'm pretty excited about it.
I'm going to be doing an update every week this month for Heartbound, by the
way. I'm going to be releasing new mini games the entire month.
So every week I'm putting on an update.
You can expect it every Saturday is the idea. Yeah.
Until I finish that scene, cause it's all mini games.
They're so fun to make.
Hopefully bring it over soon.
So yeah, I'll talk about it in a minute.
Did nobody redeem the curse quest they did?
I haven't hit a single TDS this whole time because it's been
ranting like a slug human.
I'm going to do TTS during the outbreak.
We'll do that.
Yep.
Kira May has obtained the cursed quest.
A poll has begun for chat to decide their fate.
Kira, are you there?
Slash at Kira
Kira may are you there? They're not there mods. Can you refund that before it finishes?
You have one minute. Good luck
Refund that so they don't lose their points because I'm bad as a streamer
Yes, I can go and do that.
He went to sleep, but he said he'd accept the request.
Don't refund it.
I'm wrong.
It's probably too late.
Whatever.
They get it for free.
The good news slash bad news is as soon as you play the TTS thing, it
redeems it.
So I can't, I can't refund it anyway.
There.
True and real.
I forgot to put that into the streamer, but implementation
chat has cursed Kirame with cooking.
Oh, cool.
You got to make a stargazing pie.
That's your cooking quest.
Gross, dude.
You got to make it real gross, dude.
Stargazing pie.
That's the one.
Super cursed.
Yuck, indeed.
Yeah.
We got Chronos and Steam and Stream.
We're playing some AC today.
Oh, playstop gaming.
I hope that was a joke.
It might not be.
I'm so sorry, buddy. No one's like you see like this dude
All right as a gun we're back. Oh, you just capping okay good
Dude there's actually a ton of people that are still playing in the server that have no idea like none at all
Yeah, there's actually been a bunch of people that had no clue that this was going on or anything like this
The thing that makes me really upset about it is I quit the game four days ago, and I quit the game because they have no moderation.
And after talking to Steven Shreve and to Margaret directly in our DM channel there, they said that that was intentional, but they were not banning people.
But instead they were just giving, issuing warnings. And that's it. Even for like heinous shit, like wild heinous shit, like saying they wanted to kill gay people and stuff like that.
They're like, yeah, we're just gonna warning those people.
And I was like, I am fundamentally opposed
to your way of running this.
Like as a human being,
I cannot be a part of this game and I quit the game.
I was like, this is insane.
That's disgusting.
I'm out dude.
Yeah, no, so I had the whole conversation up there
and I'll show you.
This was actually Margaret's response to me on that
and it was in a group conversation with this.
But this pissed me off, and it was this here,
to be transparent about what happened on our end.
We investigated the reports he or she submitted,
the messages in question occurred
within a very short window,
roughly a 50 minute time span,
and it involved only a handful of posts.
While some of the language used
was inappropriate and unacceptable,
our current moderation framework does not always move
directly to permanent bans
for first time offenses of this nature.
In many cases, we issue warnings first.
In this case, the report that she was talking about,
we had two different people that were reported.
One of them was a person who told me that,
I told everyone that I was sexually abusing the animals
that are fair at rescue, and also said that they were
part of the group that organized the swatting
of my house last year, multiple times.
The other person that we reported was saying
that they wanted to go around the server and kill gay people,
anyone who in the LGBT community,
they wanted to kill them.
And those two people they decided to let off
with a warning, with no ban, nothing.
And they continue to play the game,
no temporary ban, anything at all.
That is actually insane.
Like the idea of keeping those kinds of people
inside of your game and being like,
we can fix them like you're, what are you talking about?
Yeah, she was the director of communications.
So the moment that that happened, I was like, I'm out,
I'm leaving, I can't talk to you.
This is a crazy thing to say, like I'm done
and I just left and that's it.
Yeah, yep.
Yeah.
Link you in chat is actually correct.
We don't actually know that they got a warning.
Yeah, we never actually got confirmation
that we got a warning that they got a warning.
We just know that they continued to play the game
eight hours a day, every day from that point on.
Yeah, it's just, it's just shit behavior, dude.
Yeah, so like the moment I got that,
I was like, I can't be a part of this.
I'm leaving.
That's it.
Like, and I told the whole community,
like I put it on an Aspen or a guild discord
and I was like, I'm done, dude.
That's it.
And then four days later, they shut the company down
and it blew up.
So like,
wow.
Yeah.
It's literally four days between those two moments.
And I was like, cool, very nice.
Yeah.
And I'm gonna be real with you, dude.
Like it's really sad.
Like that's really shit.
Narc was right.
No, he was not.
I know, I know there's a bunch of people
that are going around and be like,
Narc was right.
No, Narc lied about the desert in the video game.
Narc was, honestly, if he would have not done that,
if he would have not used his visual evidence
as a lie like that,
he probably would have made a difference,
but he didn't.
He lied about it.
And we proved him wrong with video.
The poor communication.
Like if he'd just been like, you know,
interpret our communication with us blah blah blah,
he would have had an actual argument.
It would have been correct.
Like, cause the communication was awful,
but that wasn't what it was.
It was communications bad
because the desert is actually not what they're saying is.
Here's why that that's not what ashes was.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem was the communication, not the desert.
Yeah. He could have made a difference
by stating what was actually wrong
instead of making something up.
And by making something up, I can't support that dude.
just say the shit that's wrong, dude.
And like I said earlier,
I actually agree that Narc was treated badly.
And I think I know why, right?
From a personal basis.
So one of the things that I did
was I put together a write-up for Steven.
Let me go and find this real quick.
I actually sent it to Winky.
I put it together a write-up for Steven
because I was pissed off as a player
because one of the things that they did
was to me, heinous, right?
Steven really liked ArcGage a lot.
He liked ArcGage.
I'm going to say too much.
And he took a feature from our cage called sport fishing.
They put it directly in the game of ashes
of creation one to one down to the iconography.
The models, everything was exactly the same.
They just rebuilt what it had in them.
When they did that, all of their design philosophy
became clear.
You see this boat right here.
You see this?
This is the boat from ashes of creation, right?
And I want you to look at some of the features
of this boat.
You have ramps going down the back.
You have this box right here and a radar system
in the back of this.
Now I want you to look at the one from Arcage.
There's the radar system,
there's the ramps down the back.
The reason that this boat is designed this way
is because in Arcage,
you have to use the radar to find the fishing nodes
and then you have to go there,
you have to chum the water
and it's visually indicated by seagulls,
sound familiar from ashes,
and then you have to fish up the fish
playing a minigame where you pull left and right
and it does one damage when you do that,
up and down and it does more damage, same exact system.
And then when you finish and the fish runs out of HP,
you have to jump in the water and get the fish
and then run up these ramps to get back on.
It's the exact same system.
Nothing changed, no iteration, no innovation whatsoever.
Exactly the same.
Now the reason why this is important to understand is
it worked in arc age, but it didn't in ashes.
And the reason why is because in arc age,
the reason you had to jump into the water
was to add friction.
Specifically because if your ship got blown up,
you could repair it for one gold.
So the jumping in the water was there
to make a scary moment for PVP,
where you have to get that fish and get back on the boat,
which makes it so that it's much more dangerous
to fish out there,
because you could replace a whole boat
with one fish worth of gold.
In ashes of creation, that wasn't the case.
You had to buy a full 25 gold ship again,
which is like 25 to 50 fish.
you're never recovering from that financial loss
of somebody PVPs you.
So they copied the system,
but they didn't understand how it fit
into the game world economically.
This is why you don't just copy paste systems.
This is why you don't just steal somebody else's homework.
You have to understand why it was designed
that way in the first place.
So then they designed this ship to go for that gameplay
of jumping into the water to get the fish.
But jumping into the water to get the fish
doesn't work in their economic system.
You have to understand it.
And that's the problem here.
And that's why I brought it up to him.
what I said in this was this. I wrote all of this and then I said,
this is exactly the same gameplay loop interactions, iconography and boat design
to accomplish the task.
There is nothing iterative on this design in nothing iterative on this design.
And it is not unique in any way.
I'm extremely disappointed to see this in ashes and it makes it feel like an
archage private server feature instead of an up and coming in the mode that
stands in its own. Now back to narc, right?
Narc felt like he was getting ignored.
He was a big content creator for the game.
And then suddenly Steven stopped paying attention to him.
They have stopped talking to him and he got bitter and he started making hate
content for the game. I understand that.
I don't think he's wrong for doing that. Right?
The moment I sent Steven this, the same thing happened to me.
The moment that I challenged the game,
Steven ignored me from now on. It was from January 3rd onwards.
Steven did not respond to a single one of my messages.
So I'm going to tell you this right now.
I almost guarantee that happened to narc almost guarantee it and I can understand why he would go
From being super supportive of the game to being bitter over time because of this
Super get it the problem I have with narc's messaging is that he lied about the desert and we proved that visually yep in my video
That's it. I don't think he's wrong for the rest of it
I think he was wrong for that he probably felt jilted and I would too it makes sense right and
And this is wild, dude, but I hope that makes sense to you. Does that make sense to you? You get it?
If Mark had claimed that, you know, Intrepid were inconsistent and, you know,
ineffective in their communications with the player base and with streamers,
I would fully agree that we had no problem with what they said.
But what they did say wasn't reflective of reality. It was a personal point they were making.
Immortal waters with that lie. Exactly. If the lie wasn't there, it would have been fine. It made sense completely.
Yeah, Shocker, there's nuance to this. Yes. Yes.
I sympathize with him. I don't agree with him. Yes, you get it. Yes
Yep, and I don't think he was wrong for feeling like shit for that
But they give you's using ends just by the means to push his narrative
Even if I agree with the narrative bingo, that's why I feel bad about it. Is this peon? No, what?
No, all the Chronos his voice sounds like angry peon. Yeah
He's British. They all sound the same. I've heard this four of us
We're all just pretending to be different streamers for tax purposes. That's what it is. Yeah, it's true
It's true. It's angry. Pian actually British.
Lazy. Pion. I think it is. Sorry. Not angry. Pion. I don't know what they were saying.
Oh, is it? I've been up a lot. I got woken up in the middle of the night with this news, by the way.
Literally, I only got to sleep two and a half hours and then I got woken up. She was like,
Hey, uh, Ashes of creation is gone and Stephen resigned. And I was like, what?
What? I'm like in bed. I'm like, uh, so I got woken up to that, which was cool.
And then I had to like hop online and be like, what the shit is going on?
Like pulled up all the news and shit.
And then like I was doing that for like three hours before the stream.
And I was like, God damn it.
So like that was all the time I had to prepare for this shit.
Yeah.
What happened with Hytale?
Hytale is wonderful.
Everything about Hytale is great.
I love Hytale.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What the shit is going on exactly?
Yeah, I didn't get woken up by my normal arms because yesterday I had a
migraine all day.
So I was down to stupid in a hibernation mode.
I woke up this morning fine and was like, oh my God, everything's on fire.
what happened.
Yeah. It's heartbreaking. I think it's, I wouldn't even say stages agree for me because
I already, I already cut and ran, dude. I, I, I deleted the game four days ago after
I saw Margaret's response to me on the moderation shit. I was like, I can't support you and
it's not a game systems thing. It's not a, basically what it was is she, she said,
our, you know, our plan is to give them a chance to recover when they say things
like praising Hitler and Chad and like doxing people like we want to give them a chance to recover
from that you know and and I was like I don't want to give you a chance if that's your policy
like that's I'm out dude like I can't do that yeah yeah for those who missed that that's exactly
what it was um we reported a bunch of crazy shit to them and this this was Margaret's response to
this here um was that their their policy uh was some of the language users inappropriate
acceptable here we go uh their policy is that in their current moderation framework this does not
always move to a permanent ban for first time offenses this nature um to this day even right now
there is a guy on leneath that has been making tons of alts and just talks shit about jewish people
that's all he does in global all the time and their policy is to issue a warning
No, that guy's just been doing that for ages. He's been doing it since the launch of this
phase and I have like 40 of his characters ignored.
When we were getting stage by things that we had reported before Christmas still hadn't
been resolved by the 10th of January. I was, that's when I started to really fall
away from the game because I was like, you know what, even in the depths of dealing
with like two or 3000 unbanner quests a day, we still don't leave things go beyond
three days, like let alone waiting two weeks for a moderation ticket to be reviewed. That's
that's an appropriate because if that had been direct doxing to global chat, where's the line?
How is there's no prioritization going on? They say there's no triage system in place.
It's not it's not a safe environment. And I've made a comment to you in the past when we've
been discussing which servers to play on out. I don't feel like x y that is a safe place for
our community. This is now beyond that significantly beyond that. And I think yeah,
made the right choice a few days ago. This is underlined that for me.
I have no idea who that is, Slumpy. I don't know if that's a person that sounds like a bot name,
dude. Yeah, Nicola. Where are you seeing that even? Now I'm kind of interested. Your name pops up as
first time chat by the way the box. Obviously, AC wasn't using AI for investors. No, no. I mean,
like, all of this is super weird. I think I want to sum all of it up so we can give something
to shade lock that turn into a video and there's just so much going on at the same time I've
talked about so many different subjects in this and I started off angrier than I am right
now so it's time to do that.
This is wild.
He's waiting for a later phase of alpha or beta to get ashes.
This is pretty sad.
It's grim, dude.
The whole thing isn't incredibly grim.
Yeah, it's like really, really bad.
I've been telling people to wait since the steam launch broadly if they were on the
fence about it and I'm glad to be honest.
That's been my view on it.
been a little cagey about it since the steam launch.
And a lot of things now kind of make sense
that we're a little bit like,
why is this happening before?
If you were given a chance to pull a high tail
by the IP and rights to the game, would you?
No, no, not.
And here's the reason why.
I don't think their tooling is in a place
that it actually makes sense
to purchase something like this.
As an example of this,
let me just kind of break down one of the issues.
They had a number of different regions.
These regions have specific resources
that are inside of them, right?
All of these regions then have nodes within them.
So you've got little towns in each one of these.
These towns then have quests
in the form of commissions and by orders
that need to have specific resources for them.
Those resources are supposed to be local to the region,
except all of them across every one of these side regions
had broken ones, random commissions that were broken,
random by orders that were broken,
that made them have to go back to the Riverlands
to get resources here.
This was not intended.
and they were manually fixing each and every one of them slowly but surely.
The reason why I wouldn't want ashes of creation is because they didn't seem to
understand or implement any system of inheritance here.
Generally the way you would make this work, this region has these resources.
This is the wood. This is the type of stone.
This is the kind of gem, whatever it is, right?
And you would put that inside of a bucket under that resource, under that,
that zone. All of the quests would then pull from this list. You would never have to check
each of those individual quests. They would just work.
Rivalance down, Rivalance quest, bingo. And this is the problem. The fact that it worked
this way means that they built the whole thing like shit. It doesn't make sense to
build it this way. You are generating infinite work for yourself. And that's the issue
I had. And so like when we're looking at that, I go, why did you build it
like this, this shouldn't even be a problem. And they didn't
like, that should never be a problem. Like this should just
be an instant hookup of like, wow, I put all the resources that
are unique to the zone. And then all the quest pull from that
list. But instead, they hard coded all of it hard code
go ber. Another example of this is kind of telling from
their their updating schedule, right? They didn't update
schedule the other day, or update, where they nerfed all
of the elixirs by about 30 to 40%. Right? Yeah. And when they did this, it took three
hours to implement that update. Now that's not so bad because they were like, Oh, there's
server performance that stuff in there too. And I was like, that's a bit weird, but it's
not so bad. The problem came when 20 minutes after it went live, the community lit on
fire and revolted. So then they said, Hey, we're going to have downtime to revert
this. Normally, when you revert something like that, it's not very long at all.
It's very simple.
You just revert to previous build.
It took them two hours to revert.
What?
What?
That doesn't make any sense.
That gets real weird.
That's real weird.
So I don't understand how their infrastructure was set up and their testing cycles and
the way that they were actually building the game inside of Unreal that would lead
them to have a situation like this.
makes no sense from a normal base development standard. None of that makes any sense. Yeah,
I don't know if there was no back of the previous build. Maybe it was the way that they were
deploying it to all the different mesh nodes. I have no idea. It just doesn't make sense.
Yeah. Yeah, no DevOps guy. It feels like a failure of DevOps dude. Yeah. What's up?
I guess I made a really good point. As people say, asking why we didn't want to pull a high
tail with this, I tell you to remember was was really was very well thought of. It wasn't
we didn't have access to it. It wasn't that the IP itself hasn't been damaged. People still had
confidence in it as a standalone game. I don't think the player base has that confidence in
ashes anymore to make it worth picking on the IP and the risk and the sheer amount of work.
And as the Thor is talking about, you know, they basically detect debt, but it needs to be
completely reworked to make it actually viable. It wouldn't make sense. I don't think.
Also, for JChed and Chat, you're laughing at mesh nodes. The reason why I'm using that term
is because they're doing something called a server worker, right? Their server worker system
creates a grid on the world map. And the way that that was working is, if you were in this region,
you weren't work like server worker one, server worker two, server worker three, server worker
four. When you walk through that, you dropped over a server boundary. This is a mesh or a
grid of server workers. Yes, a worker nine gang, Brian barrels server one. The intention of
of this was to make it dynamic. Dynamic meant that it was supposed to resize based on the
needs of the server. And it never did that. The dynamically shifting grid never dynamically
shifted on live servers, but apparently did it on the PTR for a while, but it never did
on live servers, which is super weird. So when I'm talking about like their meshing
server system, I'm talking about this, I'm talking about the server worker system,
which is pretty cool technology to be honest with you and probably is going to make,
you know, the current owners or the venture capitalists,
whatever you're most working on now.
Yeah. So you say it's a massive deal.
It's awesome.
But the venture capitalists that now own all of this
are probably going to make a pretty penny selling it off.
That's how I feel about that.
Have the grid change every time,
sounds like it creates bugs too.
Yeah. It also lets people do items across the boundaries.
A lot. Yeah.
Something tells me they never got it working properly.
Doesn't seem like they did. No.
Yeah.
We already knew the dynamic gridding was something they're working on very heavily.
It was the focus of the first three phases into phase 2.5.
And then when we got, people didn't want to engage in phase 2.5 because it was, again,
it was server gridding is the focus.
So we're up with about a year testing just the server grid technology,
which was making it seem like they were just working on the tooling to sell the tooling.
That was why they stopped talking about server gridding.
But it seems that they just completely left it there.
Yeah, gemstone on the side. Yep. That's what I've been doing. I do enough damage to the gemstone crab that I actually get stuff now
Oh, wait, did I go up another level of strength? I think I did
85 sick not even halfway getting there
Do you think they tank ASC on purpose to sell the tech? No, I disagree with that entirely
I think Stephen actually generally cares about it genuinely cares about it
But I just think he's him and a rest the team are in way over their head and some of the things that they've done are highly
suspicious. I don't have proof of that, of it being malice. I don't have proof of it being a scam,
but let me show you one of the things that looks like a scam to me, feels like a scam to me, right?
So let's go look at this. We've got, and finally in the case of Ash's accretion does not launch,
we promise to refund all backers in full. This is directly on their Kickstarter.
This counts as a launch, potentially. By putting it on Steam out of the blue for no real reason
in a build that is not ready for the public eye,
they fulfilled that obligation, potentially,
which means they may not have to refund Kickstarter backers.
That looks like a scam to me.
That smells like a scam to me, and that smells intentional.
Does that make sense?
They would argue that it's a launch in the courtroom.
They would.
Yep.
Early access is a pre-launch.
Early access counts as a launch a lot of the times.
You'd have to argue it in court.
Yeah, it feels like we had this conversation
We will there's gonna be a lot of people that hop in that have not had the full context of the conversation over and over again
Now waking up, you know, it's it's 7 30 a.m.
6 30 a.m. In Pacific though like it's yeah US time don't be waking up and some of them will be
So long waiters in the days before they went to bed that will be what's going on now. I have an idea one moment
I'm going to their announcement
Did they ever say the word launch?
Oh, by the way, still off of two.
They just stopped using phases.
Yeah.
Did they use the word launch in here?
Launcher officially moved to steam with the launch of its early access.
Even then, you're getting down into the very specific nuance of the word launch to get
to that stage where it's being discussed at the legal level.
That's going to be a courtroom between two lawyers in front of a judge after thousands
upon thousands, if not millions of expenditure to get you to that stage.
You're just not going to do it.
That's exactly it.
What I'm saying is like this, this is a legal problem.
It smells, it smells.
The only one who wins here are lawyers now.
But yeah, let's sell it goes.
It's like to be honest with you, as a player,
it feels like malice to me.
It feels like a scam to me.
It feels like a rug pole to me,
but they have to prove it in court.
Not on Twitter.
That's the problem, right?
Yeah.
The matter there has to be money to get,
and there ain't, oh yeah,
there's no money to get.
They're done. They took the bag and ran. Yeah. Um,
I think it's very interesting to read this limited statement of personal
capacity and not on behalf of the company regarding the situation,
control the company shifted away from me and the board began directing actions
that I could not ethically agree to or carry out.
That's really suspicious to me.
And the reason it's really suspicious to me is he's the only one on the board
of directors,
which means it'd have to be an executive board or an investor board of
some kind, which generally should not have power, not full power, because he is the only
designated director on the board for the company.
So I mean,
It doesn't mean the only shareholder though, because that's what the trains are going to
be paid out as them is.
We know for a fact that there is Jason Karemis who holds something like 9.6% of the company
shares as a revenue the last time this conversation a year ago.
Correct.
But if that is the case, why didn't they use the funding they had to pay out
those shareholders?
Because they got Kickstarter money, they got $3 million.
They could have paid out the shareholders of that moment.
And they just added not to.
They set up a time bomb for themselves, that's what it feels like to me.
Like that feels like a time bomb.
This is why you don't get involved in venture capital kids, this is why you don't do it.
Do not do it.
Yeah, do not get involved in venture capital.
As Goldy even made a video about one hour ago, this is blown up.
Yeah, makes sense.
Did he, did he quote any of my tweets and shit? Cause to be real with you,
it sucks because like I went on Asmongold's channel like last year to defend the game against
what Narc was saying about the desert because it was fake. What are you saying?
And the game was in a great state then. It was awesome back then. It's from the stream
earlier. Nice. Yeah, it was, it was honestly, the game was in an awesome state back then.
It was phenomenal. And then over since March of 2025, they just shit it.
it. Shit the bed. Warnacked is 60 day and then layoff. Do we know any dates? So the Warnacked
has apparently been applied to this, which means 60 days, right? The email that is allegedly
sent to the employees, which we showed off earlier, states that they're not getting paid,
but there's no money for payroll. So like, this is going to get real legal real fast,
Yeah. It's going to get really legal really fast.
Yep.
Where'd the money go? No, but Polaris, we know that two months ago right before the launch on steam were around the steam launch time that we were told by Stephen that the operating expenses were weekly 800K.
Yeah.
That's where the money went.
Yeah, he posted that on Twitter or not on Twitter.
on on it was a reddit thread that the comment has since been deleted.
I've got this.
He actually deleted.
Yeah.
So I can give you the reddit thread that's talking about the deleted comment or talking
about the original comment itself.
Yeah, grab it.
You got the screenshot.
He did delete it.
It's totally gone.
Yeah.
That's the screenshot.
I took a copy of it four days afterwards just in case we would need it.
Yeah, here we go.
This is such a weird thing to say, too.
So another person said, another day, I see lawsuit.
Why is AC launching on Steam seemingly out of nowhere?
They're being sued for $850,000 by their local cloud service provider.
Contract disputes are fairly common in business, and this will be resolved in a simpler manner
to other disputes and trepidacy in its nine-year history.
$800K is a week's worth of OPEX for the studio operating expenses.
promoting concern over this should consider that. Why would you say that? That's just,
I didn't think that was smart to say at the time and I called it not smart. It's just a weird thing
to say. Yeah, it's such a flippant comment and he's deleted it now it's gone. So yeah, very weird.
Yeah. Yeah, it's, it comes across as out of touch as shit, right?
Clive Computing, save your cat-ex by growing op-ex, exactly dude.
Try waybacking it?
I don't know if you can wayback it.
I'm just a Reddit thread, isn't it?
Wayback can work in Reddit.
It's a bit weird sometimes.
I'd have to know the exact page for it.
Do we have the page?
Do we know where it is?
I'll have a dig.
I'll see if I can find it.
I bet you deleted it because it just wasn't looking in the upcoming legal disputes.
Maybe.
I don't know.
That's wild, right?
Yeah, I'm.
Can you AI the cloud?
Bro, what does that even mean?
Do you think steam will remove this game soon?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Do you think steam will refund us?
I don't know.
I can't be refunded.
I bought the game from Intrepid early on.
So like I didn't buy it through steam.
I'm never getting my money back.
Awesome.
We've got we've got ads in a moment.
So that's going to pop up while I go through Stevens
post that common history to find the original thread. I'll put some of the
some of the interesting ones that tie into like the development style and
stuff in there as well if it helps you. Are you guys quoting Ludwig dude? That's
funny as shit. One of Ludwig's quotes is, I'm losing a lot of money. This is my
yeah, I lose more money than you'll ever make. It feels like that. It's not
even wrong. Like this quote from Steven feels like the Ludwig meme, dude.
Lose more money than you'll ever make. No, he hasn't deleted it. It's just
no longer index for some reason. Here we go. Link, link, link. Yep. Providing it now.
There you go. It should take you directly there. Thanks. Yeah, because I searched it
and it didn't pop up. Yeah. Unfortunately, I use Reddit quite a bit. I used to. I do
love yourself. Stop doing that. No. God damn. This is how I stopped myself from
missing Eve or just occasionally log on to Reddit. Don't miss Eve.
I understand. We'll join like an Eve anonymous club or some shit.
This is basically Ash's accretion was Eve anonymous, dude.
He didn't do one NC stuff. Where's that?
Where's that shooter ammo that you were probably been promising me for two
years? It's called Cinder City now. Give it to me. Give me the mic.
I'm so excited. Damn it, dude.
Waiting in the ad still
Turn actual pirates into even anonymous I'm not playing again. I deleted my two-factor. That's how that's how deep into the knot
I'm not playing Eve again. I am
good
Just build our own MMO with blocks block game
Ash is a creator. Well, huh, you would watch some Eve content. I played Eve for 15 years
I was the alliance leader of Strybug played. I used to be goon swarm as well
Well, we built Pochfin, it was a space villain, never again.
All right, ads are gone.
So turns out he didn't delete the message.
It doesn't show up in search anymore
for some goddamn reason.
But yeah, it still says right here,
contract disputes are fairly common in business
and this will be resolved in a similar manner
to other disputes in Trevito Sino nine year history,
800K is a week's worth of OpEx for the studio.
So operating expenses, anyone promoting concern over this
should consider that.
So yeah, that's there.
We should just make a better MMO.
I mean, I like where block game is,
but it's smaller in scope, obviously, you know?
There's just two of us working on it.
State of MMO sucks, man.
I think that's why the channel is closed.
Yeah, it does.
State of MMOs does suck ass now, man.
It does.
Like, there's no good social sandbox MMO
that isn't pay to win.
There's no, there's no good,
like MMO that isn't like a storefront.
I find a lot of the times every time I want to play a game
and MMO, I just want to pay a subscription fee, man.
I just want to pay my 15 bucks a month
and play a goddamn video game.
That's all I want.
That's all I want.
You know, that's why I have old school runescape.
I'm fine with that.
I'm cool with that, you know?
Guild Wars is fantastic.
Is Eve not good?
Eve is incredibly paid to win.
And I know that first hand, I know.
So you should play good words too.
I like good words too.
Good words too is good.
Hey, Ashes, no, don't, dude.
No, no.
If you want to get firsthand experience of how the Steam
refund system works, you can buy Ashes,
immediately refund it.
Done.
Is that the only value left to it?
That's it.
True.
It's not that much value, Mike.
I would also, I also want you to pay $15 a month
and I play a game.
Well, all right, thanks, bud.
It's your worst to pay to win. No, it's also buy once and play forever, which is nice. Yeah, super nice.
Gilders one is subjectively better than Gilders two. Yeah, but so is Pong, right? Subjective doesn't matter.
Isn't Gilders two free? I think the latest expansions are pay. It's buy to play, you know.
Yeah, Gilders one is very good though. Gilders one is super good.
Final Fantasy 14 is also very good, but Mog station is ass
If you want to play fun, I'm a front 14 because I don't like questing
You don't like question room
No, one small favor ruined me in ways that I can only really just about like start putting into words quite a few years later
Maybe 10 years of maybe in 10 years time. I'll be okay questing again, but a chronos
You need one small favor. You just do that
No, I've told my chat very clearly that I will never go back to old school and see it
all make a new runescape for your account because that way the chance of never playing
or never doing one small favor again is a hundred percent.
I will never, never be one small favor again or put myself in a position where I might
have to.
Hey, Kronos, do you want to play old school runescape then?
No.
You want to?
Yes, but no.
Come on.
Come on.
Fifty-minute adventure.
Come on.
guide now but it it's just it it it killed my spirit in a way did you hear it
I did it before guys like it was did you hear him there Chad he said it might be
fine to do it with a guide he's breaking he's breaking they even got rid of
micro transactions in RuneScape 3 and I'm still like not back in that full
time yeah you said full-time wait so you you're back into it a little bit I
I did play Runes, I played Runes Skip once in January and once in December.
But Kronos, you too could be slapping a crab right now.
Or you could also buy a foot pedal and hit it for a whole month to get 99 agility.
Could you buy a foot pedal? How do you think I do local chatting arc-raders?
Jesus Christ.
Just to slam my foot down and start talking my old person voice.
This will be Evie and JoJo over doing that Friday night.
That is wild.
That is why I mentioned this day out. It's great. Oh yeah.
Follow 76 has the question now. That's true. 76. I,
I've been surprised at how much I've enjoyed 76. Given that,
like when it's on sale,
the whole game is like $5 on steam sale.
There's hundreds of hours of content in it.
The fallout first off is if you're only playing it every day,
playing it regularly, you can play, I was just doing it.
And that's like, that is like a subscription,
but that's where you just get,
so you do get quite a lot for it.
And you get a lot of free cosmetic benefit as well.
Yeah.
If you didn't want to pay that, just,
just buying the base game.
There's, there's thousands of hours I reckon of questing
and enjoying and the content in there with your friends.
And if someone else has the subscription,
you can join their worlds of free to play player
in their private world.
And without any of blood,
it's 7.99 right now.
I mean, there you go.
Like,
I mean, I last played it in May of 2025.
I have 183 hours in it.
because I gave it the good old college try.
I joined the game after they implemented MPCs
because it was just computers before that.
And I didn't have a bad time.
I didn't have a bad time.
I actually thought it was a lot of fun.
So I didn't have a negative experience
instead of fall at 76.
Um, I've actually, I've really enjoyed it.
I got back in because I promised Mira in December
that I would and I have in January,
I played it with quite a bit of difficulty.
I, it's, it's actually like really, really good.
That's good.
Yeah. Cause I think at the time it was kind of good.
It was like the best way to describe it is this.
It's not a good fallout game,
but you can play it with friends.
Yes.
That's it.
Yeah.
That's fine.
And it does have the best of Jank.
Just nice.
It's like not a good fallout game,
but you can play with your buddies and that's fine.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's how it's going to go.
That's the best bit of it, playing it socially.
If you want to play a proper fallout game,
I will tell everyone go back and play New Vegas
or like Tale of Two Cities,
because those are incredibly good.
76 is good if you want to do a looter shooter with your friends. It's less ball-out-y
I'm still waiting for them to fix this audio bug with all Fallout games
Which is you're down here and you hear a noise right here
But it's actually a monster three levels up because they have no verticality to their 3d audio
So yeah, I'm glad you don't pay to escape from Tarkov
That's that's that's just a that's just a core part of gameplay a vertical like sound only travels in one dimension
and that's horizontally that's how that works it does not this is what is it scams
two-dimensional you know what cronos yes i i can't call that a scam so instead of
me to call it a national's of creation how dare you how dare you
ridiculous statement yeah yeah you believe the lawyer man god damn it of course he did
it. No, dude, this is so bad, dude. Like this actually makes me really sad. Oh, wow,
it dropped to 44% already. It was like 59 yesterday. Yeah. Yeah.
And when steam has staff in properly tomorrow, I would expect to see them, they will very likely
make it unavailable for purchase. They should. They need to because it's a brand risk for them
now. That's how that always goes. 100% because we are unsure as to whether people are
getting paid for the weekend. It was the end of the month. We don't actually know if the
staff were paid on Friday. Or if they're paid like they've paid on the first of the
month. Are they getting paid tomorrow? Where's that money going to go straight into venture
capital pockets? If that is the case, when did this launch? Let me see when this launched.
This launched on December 11th. So they got paid on January 26th to January 28th
based on Steam's payout structure. So they got the money for this. They got the
money for everything. They got the payout for December and
and some of January, I believe, understanding.
Yes, January.
It's rolling months, about four days into the month.
So they'll get all of that.
So they got the lion's share of it,
which is everybody buying it over Christmas break.
And then they close the studio.
Does Steam TV close how many copies sold?
No, it does not.
The only one who knows that is the developer.
That is listed on your financials page for Steam.
That's it.
You can make assumptions based on the number of reviews
and things like that.
Usually for most games, it's about one in 20
to one in 50 people who reviews, usually one in 50 is pretty good.
One in 20 is either people are very mad or very happy for like games
that kind of get like less interest.
It's like one in 100 to one in 150.
So if you take this, they've got 9,423 reviews.
So you're looking at maybe 500,000 players total, right?
They've got a really good amount of, you know, go SteamDB is all
fuzzy math, by the way.
We don't actually know the real number, but you go to
here in the ashes of creation,
we look at the total number of players in game.
And you can see that their peak concurrency
for all of us, they can open the damn thing
and go to lifetime for that, for max.
The peak concurrency was 31,000, 32,000.
And that was mostly based on the amount of server capacity
that they had available.
So yeah, yeah, that's maybe a hundred thousand,
I would guess 150,000.
I would say I'd say about five to get, you know,
nice conservative middle of the road estimate
how many copies they might have sold.
We'll call it the 150,000 people for math purposes,
times that by the $35 they get as a share.
It's not small amount.
Yeah, cause you'll take this, the game is 50 bucks,
you got 49.99, right?
And let's say that they're all buying US, right?
49.99, he times that by 0.7, cause steam takes its cut.
And you do that times 150,000, the total number of players.
You got taxes and you should have not like five mil.
So there's a pretty good chance
they made about $5 million, pretty good chance.
That's, this is all fuzzy math to be clear with you.
It's all fuzzy math, but it's about $5 million
is what it looks like.
And if that's the case, then where's the money in tripping?
Why aren't you paying your employees?
Right?
Right?
If the payroll, right?
If the payroll's there and you're not paying it, but you got that money, where's the money?
Yeah, well, that's that's that's five weeks of banks. That's basically what you're getting there.
But before 4.8 million would be five weeks of operating expenditure. So that basically
just about covers off banks for all of that time that they've been live. Yep. And we know that
we should pay for the staff, right? And we know that they were already paid in December.
So because of that, you're actually just looking at one month's operating expenses,
which should be covered by the steam income that they just received.
Yeah, they're not paying their employees.
where is the money well based on the email that we've seen and come to some
reports from staff members who've reached out to us yet and we've got like three or
four separate reports but we won't know until it doesn't happen if that makes
sense yeah but yeah where's that money going it's going to pay and it'll go
back into paying off those outstanding liens which are they're required to do
by the way that the law works so that's gonna be I think with the
current amount I've seen is around three million on those that sending
liens across five of them wait hold up the ultimate
Ultimate TZ said someone said on Discord steam is holding money for two months with releases that could be possible
I have not done a release on steam in a long time. We've had our game in early access. They may have a policy for that
Let's go see if partner
Steam games comm they will usually list all this in documentation in terms of payments and they will list all of this stuff out
For it. So let's go to finance real quick. We're going to go to reportings and payments FAQ
Or can I see the amount of sales and enough access to this?
Why do the sales secure partnered site differ?
Can I download my monthly statements?
Will I receive notifications?
U.S. revenue share of my report?
Where do I send my invoice?
Why don't I receive payments yet?
You must provide us with all the completed bank and tax information.
Both these information are there.
We'll put a trace on the payment.
Please note that this process can take a few days
before we provide you with a date.
If your payment failed,
those return to us and notify you.
Expected to be paid in a month.
We pay out by the 30th of the month
month following sales. Yes. For example, we'll pay you for the calendar, February month sales
by March 30th. Yes. So they got paid in January. Yeah. Already done. Yeah.
Yeah. Which is the same that I see. What have been paid basically on the 1st of February.
I don't know if there's anything in here that says that it's held for launches.
But that's the second bullet point is you're paid for the month following sales.
So if you so anything that's sold in December, you get paid at the end of January, which
is what this weekend is. So I'm looking to see if there's a caveat to that. That's what I'm looking for.
Yeah, fair. Yeah. I'm looking to see if there's a caveat for launches. No.
I can't see a caveat for this. If you have a person who's claiming that on Discord,
I would love to see the documentation from Steam for it. Because I get paid a lot from Steam.
Is a caveat in one of the terms and conditions I recall based on if they are unable to
verify the identity of the ultimate beneficial owner in line with legal requirements that
parts of the world, they won't pay them. That's, that's where I know there's a caveat.
But I think that's true of a lot of things. That's not, that's not a steam unique one.
Yeah. I think, I think that doesn't, we don't actually know on that one. Yes.
Came straight here when you heard the news. It's so rough, dude. Yeah. I actually
quit the game four days ago due to mismanagement and lack of moderation in the game. And
I was very explicit with Steven and Margaret as to why.
And I ended up quitting because of their responses.
So I uninstalled the game four days ago,
made it really public for our guild and everything.
Can you repeat that in English?
Chronos can't speak English.
He's British and a lawyer.
It makes it difficult for him.
He can only speak in legalese.
So, yeah.
Basically, it doesn't look like there's a caveat to this.
Effectively the way that Steam works is pretty simple.
When you sell a game,
let's say you sell a game in December,
you get paid by January 30th on your December money,
which means that since this game launched
on December 11th, that game,
all of the money for the December sales
of the entire month of December,
which is the largest amount of sales
is in intrepid's pockets.
We did some fuzzy math to determine how much money
it might have been,
and it might be around $5 million.
Since their operating expenses are $850,000 a week,
And we know they were already paid for December,
or sorry, 800,000 a week based on Stephen Shariff's
actual statements on Reddit.
We know that they would have potentially
enough money to pay their employees.
Based on employee reports of emails,
those emails state that the employees are not being paid,
as of right now.
So where's the money?
Yep, taxes rather than yeah, I can rob by taxes from that government thinks it's money
on a quarterly basis.
Yep, 150k people is from alpha one.
Don't know.
Don't know.
We don't know how many sales actually were made.
That's the problem.
We can't actually see that data.
So it could be vastly less.
Here's something that we can tell, which is pretty interesting.
If somebody builds a scraper, we might be able to gain some information from this.
I'll show you why.
Let's go pull this up here.
My review states product received for free.
It was not.
It was not received for free.
I bought it through Intrepid's website during a previous phase.
When they launched the steam, I immediately got it added to my account
by attaching my Intrepid account to it.
This made my review say product received for free because technically I received it on steam for free despite buying it another platform
Right so with that in mind if you go through and you look at all the reviews everyone who bought it for free
Who got the game for free was a previous player
Anyone who got it not for free is a new player and from there
You might be able to start to get an idea of how many people actually bought the game on steam
That's probably the only way I can think of that you could do it unless they release financials
Yep. That's a steam thing. That's not an intrepid thing.
Product received for free on Steam. Yes.
Yep. It should say for free on Steam. I did not receive it.
I said, despite the label on this review, I did not receive this game for free.
I bought it through their website years back when Ash is added and, uh,
and Ash is added to my Steam account when he's moved to this platform from
their own launcher. So yeah, there's that. You can change the purchase type.
You can't change purchase type on this one.
It won't let you, even when I edited the review, it won't let me do it.
I pull it up and it won't let me change that.
Check this box if you receive this product for free.
It is not checked.
It automatically applies it because of the nature of how we bought the game
through Intrepid's website and then automatically got it into our library around here.
So can't change that one.
Little shittier there isn't clarity on that
because some of the products are actually given, actually got us.
Yeah. Yep.
Yep.
Steamless 9,423 reviews from purchasers.
I think we could just do this.
Can we just fill through that?
Oh yeah, there we go.
Nine, so 9,423 purchasers, 5,002 other.
So you're looking at two thirds of the people
who left reviews are people who actually bought it on Steam.
Wow.
I wonder why Steam didn't pull it yet?
Don't know.
Don't know.
The problem with that is you've also got a little
And like kind of for influence on that as well because the people who people who owned the game originally and have already redeemed it on steam
Have taken the steps do that are going to be more engaged than people who might have discovered the game through steam and just started playing it
And then left a review as a result
So actually is probably some behavior stuff which might skew the data there as well
So I'm not sure we could use that to gain more of an exact estimate
Have the servers been pulled down yet? No
Most estimations on sites that do this, that look at games analytics, professionally estimated
somewhere between 146,000 and 330-ish thousand copies sold. So 240K is on the average of those
estimates. The owner amount sits somewhere around the 300K mark. So I would probably
say 200,000 people may be bought it on Steam and maybe 100,000 people if all of the testers
have previously redeemed it.
Yep.
All right.
So I'm going to recap this from the very beginning so that we can get a video over
to ShadeLock.
Give me just a minute to settle this shit up because I've got a million billion pieces
of evidence all over the goddamn place on my computer now.
All right.
All right.
Let me grab that.
It's old-school RuneScape. Let's move that too. I'm here. I actually have to leave old-school RuneScape
on the screen because I find that to be hilarious. This is my subway server now. It's there. Crab
Remains. Okay, so first things first. Ash's creation is dead. If you didn't know, it's dead.
We got a message from Steven Schrieff on the Discord that says, I can make a limited statement
in my personal capacity and not on behalf of the company regarding the situation.
control of the company shifted away from me and I and the board the board which
we've never heard of before began directing actions that I could not
ethically agree with or carry out 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 team resigned
following those departures the board made the decision to issue the
worn act notices and proceed with mass layoffs that means that everybody's
going to be laid off within 60 days. I cannot responsibly speak to further details at this
time due to ongoing legal and governance matters. What I can say is the developers and staff
acted in good faith and deserve better than the uncertainty they are now facing. I'm
incredibly dismayed by the situation. This is from Steven. The problem that I have
right now is I quit this game four days ago. So four days ago, I actually was in
a talk with Steven Sharif and Margaret because we have a group DM in there. It's myself,
of their QA people, Margaret, Steven, Sharif, and Kronos.
Talking about everything that I have at the game,
it was our channel for as a content creator
to talk with the devs,
to tell them everything was going on.
And I was sending them stuff back and forth with this
and I was like, hey, we got a serious moderation problem
on the server.
And we started linking them things.
There was a guy that was actually posting comments
about Jewish people every day all day, right?
He was just doing that every single day all day.
And the account would just change every single day.
Guy never got banned.
We had a guy that was saying
he wanted to form a group to go kill all the LGBT people on the server. We got a screenshot of that,
send it up to them. Guy never got banned. We had a guy that was claiming that, you know,
there was people who were saying all kinds of heinous shit, basically. Like if I could go
through the whole list, but it's a ton of them, it's like dozens of people and people all over
the server were dealing with this and seeing it in global at all times. When I brought this
up to them, what led me to quit the game was actually this response from Margaret, which
which I have right here.
This is from our group DM.
And in this, she wrote this,
to be transparent about what happened on our end,
we investigated the reports you and others submitted
because there's a lot of people submitting these.
The messages in question occurred
within a very short window, roughly a 15 minute span
and involved only a handful of posts.
Where some of this language use
was inappropriate and unacceptable,
our current moderation framework
does not always move directly to permanent bans
for first time offenses of this nature.
In many cases, we issue warnings first,
the expectation that behavior can improve. If it doesn't, we escalate.
I think this makes sense for minor infractions.
I think it makes sense for minor infractions. You rage out, you crash out.
Fine. But when you have a dude that's sitting on the server praising Hitler
every minute on the minute or saying that he wants to get a group
together to kill gay people, you probably should ban that person.
Good to be honest. I don't feel like that's a, that's a stretch
to ban that guy. Like that said, and those were the ones we were
reporting and they didn't do it. This made me quit the game.
So I quit on, I believe the 28th is when I made my announcement about this.
I told the whole guild about it.
I was like, I'm out dude.
I can't do this shit anymore.
And a lot of people in the guild are like, I don't want to support that either.
This is insane.
It's awful to watch and they didn't want to deal with it.
So quit and then four days later, they, they killed the company, which is wild.
But that's it.
So since then a bunch of stuff has actually come out and we've learned a lot about kind of
the infrastructure and the company and like the power dynamics of the costs and things.
But the thing that I want to call out the most, the thing that really bothers me about
this is the mention of a board. The board has never existed to us as players ever. That has never
been brought up in all the years that I've been doing this. I've owned Ashes Gracian since 2021.
I've owned it since then. They have never spoken about this the first time we've ever heard about
this. So I was like, what the hell is that? So I started reaching out to some of the employees
that we know that we've been talking to this entire time. One of them talked back to me
And he said, you know, anonymity, anonymity, if I could speak under the condition of anonymity,
he told me that six months ago they formed a board.
And that's all that they know.
And since then, the company has gone downhill.
I have to take that with a grain of salt.
I have no way of proving that guy's claim, but it does align with some of the shit
that we've seen.
Last year, phase two, 2.5, the game was in a good state from January until March
in 2025.
I played the shit out of the game, dude, played thousands of hours in it.
So at around March, things started to go downhill.
It started to turn to shit.
It was a good state up until about March.
It was, that was super fun up at Dolomars, January to March area, right?
In the very beginning.
And then from there, it just went downhill.
Stuff stopped getting fixed, moderation turned into a shit show.
Everything was getting really, really bad.
It was super bad.
And it sucked because I already put myself on the line to be like,
Hey, the devs are doing a good job because they were at the time,
but that changed really rapidly.
I ended up quitting during phase 2.5 because of the state of the economics inside of the game
I came back for phase 2.5 still even though they launched on steam played it again and the economics were better
The gameplay experience is better from 1 to 8 and everything felt good
Up until you got to end game and then it turned back in the same thing and they had the exact same moderation issue
This shit has been following the whole time. They've never actually improved on these things now
They just improved the very very early game
So, with all of that in mind, we're like, okay, all of this shit is dead now.
What the hell is going on?
Do people get refunds?
Anything like that.
So, we start looking back through stuff.
Let's go into Kickstarter.
In their Kickstarter, they list under this, in the case that Ashes of Creation does
not launch, we promise to refund all backers in full.
This is the first time that I've seen anything that Ashes has done that to me
feels like a scam.
The reason why is because technically this is a launch.
Technically this is a launch.
They randomly put it up on Steam
after never saying that they were gonna put it up on Steam
the whole development cycle.
They're like, no, that's not where we're looking at this time.
Not where we're looking at this time.
In a really weird state, we're not able to update it correctly.
Everything was broken, unmoderated, a shit show
and then killed the company.
And this right here, let's makes me believe
that they are not going to be issuing refunds
because this is technically launched into early access.
And the only way that you will upend that
is in a court of law, not on Twitter,
not in comments in court.
And that sucks because that means anybody
that was a backer of this will never see a dime.
I will also never see a dime.
I paid in in 2021, not through this.
I paid through their website and it was $375,
which is a lot of money, right?
And I did that because I believed in a vision there.
And the reason that I believed in the vision
is because Stephen, at that time,
said that he had no board.
There was no backers.
There was nothing.
There was no one to tell him what to do.
And he had a great vision of the game.
He was good at selling that vision
and explaining it to people.
So then we go a little bit farther than that.
We're like, okay, well, who the hell's the board?
Well, we pulled up their records.
There's no board on here.
We have officer names, Stephen Sharif and John Moore.
They are listed entirely as chief executive officer
and secretary and the chief financial officer.
I've removed the addresses from this, right?
And down here under the board of directors,
you have Stephen Sharif, he's the only one on that board.
So if they're talking about a board,
they're not talking about the board of directors
on paper or the corporation.
They're talking about something else,
maybe an executive board, maybe investors in some way.
But the part that's really interesting about this
is this right here, control of the company shifted away from me and the board began directing
actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out.
How did the board have the much power without having a commanding stake?
They can make their voices heard, but I'm really interested to understand what the
power dynamics inside of the company were to allow for that kind of behavior, because
that's not generally normal as far as I know.
I could be wrong about that, but I don't feel like that's generally normal.
This is weird and the idea that they're also not board members on paper for the directors
is also kind of weird, right?
This doesn't make sense.
Sounds like what happened to Apple, could be, but I don't know and we don't know and
anything from there is conjecture.
So it's like, okay, that's kind of a dead end of information we've got as much as
we can there.
Let's go look into why it went this way.
So we pulled them up on LinkedIn.
Let's go grab this on LinkedIn.
You can see this.
This is actually a breakdown of all of their employees that have LinkedIn accounts.
And you'll see something really weird here.
Arts and design.
That's all of your artists, all of your designers in the game.
Engineers, 65.
Arts and design, 101.
This makes sense.
The thing that they were trying to push the most was the quests, the world expansion,
and their server tech system of being able to do server workers that mesh together.
That kind of fits their objectives and their goals, right?
And it makes sense completely that they were having so many employees in these areas.
The part where it starts to break down and not make sense is, how do you have nine quality
assurance employees, nine?
Like the general standard is one to two quality assurance employees per developer.
That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Even with automation, you could cut that down to maybe half a QA person per dev, but
nine for an employee base of 206 on LinkedIn and 250 of what has been claimed.
doesn't make any sense. That's incredibly weird. None of that makes sense. I look my crab dad.
Can't have a EXP loss even during the video. Get over there. Kill that crab. More strength.
So like this is really weird and it kind of makes sense. From an anecdotal perspective,
I'll give you an example of why this makes sense to me of why they did this. I don't think
it makes sense in a business sense, but it makes sense as to the number. During our phase,
in this last one, I became the mayor of Brian Barrel, got elected, right? That town was broken.
It didn't have a mount. We didn't know that at the time. But once we found out, I immediately went
to Stephen and I was like, yo, our town doesn't have a flying mount. Can you can you guys give
me one so we could like play the play the game as the mayor, right? Because it's a huge,
that's the whole point of becoming a mayor is getting the damn flying mountain and running the
town. So he said, oh, I'm going to get QA on it. He told QA QA said they'd be there
right away. I went to our town hall and I was told it'll be just a couple of minutes. I sat there for
an hour and a half until they finally showed up and they were not able to give me the mount
because there was no mount assigned to our town so if they gave me a mount it instantly
get deleted so they gave me a cosmetic mount with 0% movement speed.
After an hour and a half of waiting that QA team was overburdened his shit and now understand
that's an anecdotal story but watching that was wild dude that shit is insane to me yeah absolutely
bonkers does not make any sense so you should not have that few QA people and it shouldn't take
them a hunt you know an hour and a half to respond to that and I shouldn't have gotten a
team, um, out exactly. So that's ridiculous. So I was like,
okay, we've got that now. We've got that information. Then we
go on to the next thing. We're going to go over here. And I'm
going to grab this. A lot of people are saying like, Oh, narc
was right, narc was right. narc lied about the desert.
This was like a big deal in the game, right? He made a
bunch of statements of saying that the company was
bullshit. But it was a bunch of scams going on, everything
like that. And then he based all of that on visual
evidence of the desert being fake, being empty. And I
proved in a video that that was not correct. Right? Approved in a video showing
no the desert's actually really full of stuff. This doesn't make any sense. Today
I now realize why he was upset and the reason he was upset actually had
nothing to do with that. Narc was a big content creator for the game. He was
well loved by the devs and they talked to him all the time and eventually
Narc stopped getting that communication. He complained about it quite a
lot. He complained about it a huge amount in his videos. The part that's
really interesting about this is I didn't understand why they would do that at
the time. But I think the reason why is they threw away their old toy and they
started talking to me because I was the biggest content creator in the scene for
the game suddenly. And then when I started standing up to Stephen they did
the same thing to me. I'll show you what I sent him.
Grab this.
This is a write-up that I actually sent to Steven Sharif and to Margaret about one of
their features which is sport fishing.
Sport fishing was directly added to the game as a one-to-one copy from Arcage.
Directly one-to-one copy.
No iteration, no innovation, nothing changed in the gameplay behavior at all.
They even put all similar models for everything including iconography.
And I brought this up directly to them and I said this is exactly the same gameplay
loop, interactions, iconography and both design to accomplish the task.
There's nothing iterative on this design and it is not unique in any way.
I'm extremely disappointed to see this in Ashes and it makes it feel like an
arcade private server instead of an up and coming MMO that stands in its own.
I give critiques to the game all the time and I'd sent it to him in the
past, but this one seems to have hit a nerve because Stephen never responded
to it. In fact, he never spoke to me again, which is wild.
That happened on January 3rd.
We used to have conversations all the time, but the moment I did this, not anymore.
And if that was what happened to Narc, because he started calling out things that didn't make
sense and they just moved on, I can understand why he'd be upset. I get it. Even if he tried to use
the desert as a reasoning behind his anger and that desert claim was not real, I can understand
why he was mad if he was a big content creator for the game and suddenly the devs just cut
him off because he gave valid critique. And when I'm talking about this, if you
don't think this critique is valid, let me show you this. This right here is a
boat from Ashes of Creation. You can see that there's a radar down here and
there's these ramps going down the back of the boat and it's got this general
boat design. This right here is the same boat from ArcGage and you'll see
that it has a radar and the same boat design and the same ramps.
The reason why those ramps exist is because in our cage, when you go out and
you fish up things in sport fishing, you actually do a mini game where you
deal damage to the fish where you pull left and right.
It does one damage.
You pull up and down.
It does a bunch of damage and the fish dies in the water when you win.
You have to jump in the water and pick it up and go take it back out
of the boat using these ramps.
That is what is required for that.
And the reason they did that is because if your boat died in our cage,
You could repair it for one gold so there needed to be a point of friction to make it so the players had a little bit more risk doing the activity
So they weren't just printing gold something that made them stay out there for a little bit longer
So someone could go and kill them. It's a little bit more danger. So they did that
That was their gameplay loop it tied into their economics and it tied into the gameplay and it was a fun
Interesting design that was unique. Let's go over to ashes direct copy paste of the entire system direct copy paste of the boat design
But here's the problem ashes of creation didn't have a boat repair feature
It cost you 18 gold or 25 gold depending on which boat would die and because of that when your boat died
You didn't get it back. It was gone
And that's like 25 to 50 fish to go and rebuild the damn thing even before you get into the cost of parts from other crafters
So jumping into the water for this doesn't make sense anymore
You're already risking a shitload by being out there. They copy pasted the system, but they didn't understand the economics underlined
They didn't understand why it was built this way.
They just knew how it was built this way.
So they copy pasted it wholesale.
The moment I sent this, never got communication
from him again.
Every response I got from Margaret from that point on
was corporate, entirely corporate speak.
I was no longer in favor.
And I think that's what happened to NARC, man.
I really do think that's what happened to NARC.
Because this is, to me, this is super valid criticism.
Steven loved Arcage, absolutely loved it.
Big player into it.
And this is a direct copy paste from his favorite game
as the game director of the game with no changes, nothing.
You go out of that, out of that, get out of that.
So where does this leave us, man?
Game's dead, game's super dead.
I don't think we're gonna get refunds.
And I think the most likely interaction here
is that the debtors that are owed right now
are likely going to carve it up and sell pieces off.
You're gonna see a liquidation of the company,
they'll take all the components, they'll sell them off.
I mean, they've got a shitload of assets.
They've got thousands of assets for the game,
thousands of assets for the game.
So I don't think there's gonna be like a high-tail situation.
I don't think it'll be purchased by a third party
and then revived.
I think it is more likely it will be liquidated
and it will be used to pay off the debtors
and then go from there.
And I think overall I find this situation to feel very greasy.
I find it to be very greasy.
And the lack of moderation on the servers was just telling for deeper problems.
Yeah. It was a cool project. I agree. You know,
I do seriously agree with that,
but I don't think it's going to succeed with that.
The last piece that really bothers me about this,
we're going to have to wait until after the ad break. So let me do the,
Yeah, I'm doing the crab move. Let me do the the ad break real quick and we'll be right back because it's going to cut me off.
Man, I was so hopeful man, sim.
Google gadget ad break dude it just says ads thirting soon god damn it twitch do your
job twitch do your job twitch do your job twitch twitch twitch twitch you son of a bitch
Bezos, tax evasion, a yacht, an actual gold brick.
Okay, there we go, finally, god damn.
Twitch is having trouble delivering ads, obviously.
It's finally happened.
We got two minutes.
Start at TTS, oh no wait, I've got ideas in my head and I want them to fall out by answering
at TTS just yet.
I'll make sure I do all the TTS today though, don't worry.
Yeah, Lex Luzer, okay that's a funny one, Jesus.
the
of
the war and what I didn't send you that one, um,
I think I found it in Guild Chat, General Chat.
Yes.
These are Phoebus.
Got it.
All right.
Okay, correct.
Okay, correct. Cool. There's the more of my data's get 10 seconds left on ads.
All right. The data is over. The ads are over. There we go. And so the last piece of this,
I should probably second the last piece of this. We've got this. Now, understand this
image is going to be an unconfirmed claim, right? We received this from people who claim
that they were employees of the company. It looks real. We received it from a number
of people that we know were employees of the company, but I don't have a way to
approve this to you. So take it with a grain of salt, even though I believe it is real.
It doesn't mean that it is, right? I just have every indication that it appears real.
So it says, Dear team, this is difficult message to send and we recognize how unsettling it
may be to receive due to the company's current financial condition.
Intrepid Studios is providing this notice pursuant to workers' adjustment and retraining
notification, the WARN Act. This notice is being issued to all employees as a
precautionary measure while the company evaluates next steps. At this time, no final decisions
have been made regarding which positions may be impacted. A portion of the team may be asked
to continue working as the company evaluates operational and financial alternatives. Others
may be affected at a reduction in workforce of the company if unable to move forward
in its current form. Employees who are impacted will be notified directly with additional
information. With respect to compensation, payroll scheduled for February 1st cannot
be processed at this time due to the company's current financial condition.
The company is reviewing its obligations and options and will share updates as soon as
possible.
Regarding health benefits, company-sponsored health insurance coverage may be affected
by changes in employment status.
Information regarding benefit continuation options, including COBRA, is expected to be
provided by the plant administrator early next week.
That information may include important timing considerations and we encourage you to
review it carefully once reviewed.
once received. Let me translate this for you from Corpo. We're not paying you and you're
going to lose your health care. Does that make sense? So with that in mind, let's look
at something here. This is STEAM's documentation on when payments go out. I don't, and this,
this is like wild to me says, where can I see the amount of sales per month? Like
how often do you actually get sales out? So why do sales in here? Can I download
the monthly sales report. When I receive this, what do I do? Like when do I get this
stuff? When do I receive payments? Why haven't I received them yet? When can I
expect the payment, right? We pay out by the 30th of the month following sales.
For example, we will pay you for calendar February month sales by March
30th. It may take a few business days for the payment to post to your bank
account. In that case, you may see the payment in your bank account during the
first few days of April following the example above. I have been selling
games on steam for the going on about eight years.
We have two games that are up on steam.
I went back and looked,
I receive all of my payments from the 26th to the 30th,
like clockwork from steam or from valve rather every single month.
They also split it out based on which product is selling,
what part of the world it's selling in.
You get a lot of data as a developer with that in mind.
This leads me to believe that the,
if the same deals going on for them,
regardless of the size of payment,
They put this out on December 11th, 2025.
That means that they likely got paid for this already in January on January 26th to 30th.
If they can't pay their employees, where'd the money go?
That's the big question I have here.
If they're choosing to not pay their employees, where is the money from their steam sales?
And we don't have an answer for that.
an answer for that. And I think that's really weird and very bad. Yeah, where's the money,
Lebowski? Exactly. Where's the money? So if you look at this right here, you've got
December 11th, right? And someone said there's a chance that they hold it for two months
during launches. I went back and looked at our launches. They didn't hold it for two
months for that. I don't know if that's a new policy, but I can't find it in
Steam's documentation. If you can find this in Steam's documentation, please
send it to me because this is all public documentation. You can look through it
all yourself. But I don't see anything saying during a launch, we hold the money for longer.
Anything like that. And that's it. Isn't payout by 30th of January? Yes. So December 11th would
be payout by 30th of January. It's currently February 1st. And that's that. Weren't they
in debt? They are in debt. But if you're not paying your employees, you're going to
run afoul of a lot of different laws there. You're going to run into some serious problems.
Serious problems. So that's one of the last components on this. I don't know if
I missed anything? Let me look for this. I don't think I missed anything to talk about
this. Is there anything you guys think I missed? It did. Don't think so. Oh, the Karen thing.
Yeah, the Karen thing is my last one. That's the last one. Let me grab that. Where's the
Karen thing? I don't have the image. Do you have a link to the Karen thing? I don't
or what. We have so many different. Yes, here we go. Copy image. Thanks bud. All right.
Just the screenshots taken of the show also shows where they can get that same information.
Show you the URL. All right. So this one is if you go to biz file online dot s o s dot
c a dot gov on California government website, you can actually go in here and you can look
up in Trepid Studios and you'll find something really interesting. Under this filing number,
you'll see that now the secured party info for an active amount of debt, so like the debt for the
company, is under Karen L. Borieco. Borieco? I don't even know how to pronounce that. That's a weird
word. We don't have that in English. B-O-R-E-Y-K-O. Now let's go and look this up. Karen
El Borreco. And you'll see something very interesting come up. They were a
co-owner at Vemma. And if we look at Vemma, there's a Wikipedia article because
that's always a good thing. Vemma, a nutrition company, was a privately held
multi-level marketing company that sold dietary supplements. The company was
shut down in 2015 by the FTC for engaging in deceptive business practices
and being a pyramid scheme. The company, based in Tempe, Arizona, was founded by in 2004 by Benson
Lauren and Karen Borieco. In 2013, the company reported $221 million in revenue. Most distributors
were in their 20s. The company had frequently been accused of being a pyramid scheme by US media.
Business analysts and former distributors and was fined by the Italian government.
The Boracos later formed Bode Pro, Bode Pro, I guess in 2017 and merged the legacy of them
of products into the new company in 2018, where they continue to be sold.
Why are they involved in this now?
It smells, dude. Like it just smells, man. Like I just,
I don't have anything I can say conclusively about that outside of,
Man, that smells, it's got a real bad smell, right?
A little bit, it's just a bit of a smell, right?
Just a little bit.
So that goes into a whole side of financial backers
and debt management and liens.
And to be honest with you,
I don't understand that world of things.
I can just see on the surface that that looks really bad.
That's a strange bedfellow to have, overall.
So with that in mind, I don't like that.
I don't like any of this.
The way that I feel over all of this now with Ashes of Creation is I'm pretty sad about it and like I've been backing this game since 2021.
I have played it the entire time I have well over 3000 hours in the game entirely.
I played it hard for a lot of different phases. I was the mayor of multiple nodes, ran massive communities. At one point we have 50, 50 people, it's 50 people per guild. We had 200 guilds running at the same time simultaneously into the same banner because they wouldn't let you make guilds larger.
And like this time around we had thousands of players that were involved in it as well
And the thing that got me about this was because of the moderation issues and because the experience that people were have
I cut it off and I made an announcement to the guild on the 28th of January saying I can't do this anymore
And I don't think you guys deserve this because you don't you didn't that players didn't deserve the abuse
They were getting and they didn't deserve to have developers that just didn't give a shit and
These devs didn't give a shit there and I've got it in writing that they didn't give a shit because they thought they could
fix those people, which was super strange.
Couple that with all of this financial backing bullshit
and the idea that there's a board that isn't a board
that is a board and it just gets,
it gets really dicey and really gross.
And I'm sad about it.
I really am.
I just feel really negatively overall.
And it feels like a shit little wasted time.
Even though we had fun in it, even though we did.
Yeah, it does.
A board with an abort.
Yeah, no, it just feels bad, dude.
My hope is that lawsuits come out of this
and we get to learn more information.
But right now, I think anything outside
of what we've talked about is speculation
unless more new information comes to light.
But I do feel that this entire system of bullshit
just wasn't necessary and the direction that they went
as a studio wasn't necessary
and the lack of moderation wasn't necessary.
And a lot of these felt like really novice missteps
for many things throughout the game.
Not to mention all the weird bugs and shit
that we dealt with that hadn't been fixed
over a year, but like financial bullshit being in this direction and no
moderation is just weird, then people getting refunded.
I don't think they're going to get refunded.
And we talked about that kind of at the beginning of, I don't believe
anyone's going to get refunded because of the line on their, their, um, you
know, claim for that.
I think the, the least, the most likely people to be refunded are
likely on steam.
And I'll give you an example of who that is.
If you go to their steam page and you go to the bottom and you go down
here and you look at purchase type, steam purchasers 9,423. Other is 5,002. The other
are people that are listed as product received for free, right? Like this person here. The
problem with that is we didn't receive it for free. We bought it through Intrepid's
website. If we go into here and look at my review, I wrote a massive negative review
for the game, massive, and I listed out all of my grievances and everything like
because I'll leave it to you guys and chat right now.
I listed out everything.
And this was written on January 9th,
and I edited it on January 10th,
because I thought better of some of that stuff
and I wanted to add more context to other ones.
With that in mind,
putting this up there,
it listed me as product received for free,
but I didn't receive it for free.
Instead, I bought it through their website.
And if I go pull this up right now,
I can actually go look at my purchase right now.
I've got it up here.
We'll grab this.
for $375 on June 4th, 2021. But because I bought it through a website and then they went to Steam
later, it transferred my license to Steam. And it says that I got it for free now.
So every single person who already on the game is listed is for free. So if you want to find
out who bought the game through Steam, who actually purchased this, it's actually not even
the majority of the community right now that's left to review. The Steam purchasers,
the new wave of players is two thirds of the reviews. That's massive. What comments are allowed
though? Why comments are allowed? Oh, I turned it off on that because people just trolled me. Yeah,
you can remove it for any of yours. But with this steam purchases, 9,423. It's two thirds, man.
It's two thirds for that. So like, I don't know, man, even even going into this, like we can go
into this for a moment. I think it's actually really interesting. This is all the stuff that
was listed as being given to me as of purchasing this. And I'll kind of go down this to tell
you guys are the stuff we didn't get. The Voyager Priota Pack, this is the one that I bought back
in the day. Character name reservation. My character name was actually never reserved,
even as a streamer. Ever. Even as the largest streamer for this video game. That never got
reserved. In fact, people would steal it every phase and they would use it to troll. And then
I would contact Steven and Steven would go in and actually delete that character or remove
their name and change it to something else so that I would get it. Nobody's character name
name reservations were ever fulfilled at all, even though we
paid for them. Alpha two access key that got fulfilled.
Technically, everything was a shit show, but it got fulfilled.
Beta never happened. Beta two never happened. Didn't get
those. Pre-order Ember pack never got implemented. Steel reef
pauldron didn't get that geyser glider. Don't even know what
that is. Maelstrom's crown. Nope. Mail the pheasants for
theory. Nope. Coral coarser. No. Boundless basin. No.
Embers. Now, the only thing I got in this whole list was that. That's the only thing that got
delivered to me as a customer. That's it. Dude, you got mega scammed? I feel fine about my purchase
and I know that's weird to say after all of this. I got 3,000 hours of gameplay out of that.
I enjoyed my time legitimately in it and when the developers took a stance that I could not
not possibly fathom enjoying like couldn't even fathom being behind them on I cut cordon
walked away because it was gross and that's it man the only thing that I can say unequivocally
like the only thing that to me as a person feels like a scam is that tie in with their
their Kickstarter that feels like that entirely yeah yeah no I don't think it's cope dude
I had fun playing the game legitimately. So I had fun playing the game.
And I think that's the honest opinion that I have.
It's more nuanced than just scammed. They're not scammed.
I do think it feels entirely like a scam.
I do think that all these weird background deals and bullshit that they kept
from everyone is disgusting. I do. But as a player,
I enjoyed myself for the majority of the time that I played that game.
Majority of it up until the end when it turned into a shit show. Yeah.
Three to credits was bad. Yeah. You know,
steam launch was clearly a final cash grab. That's how I feel as well.
I can't prove that. I don't think anyone can prove it.
I think we just have a feeling about it and it's easy to state it as fact.
But like this looks real bad.
They never said they wanted to launch on steam.
Anytime anyone brought it up, they said, oh, we're not thinking about that right now.
We're not considering a steam launch.
And then suddenly they just launched on steam out of nowhere.
And I, for me, I feel like they did that because of this obligation that was listed on their Kickstarter.
Finally, in that case, Ash's creation does not launch. We promised to refund all backers in full.
And this Kickstarter was $3,271,000. That's a shitload of money.
So by launching on steam in a shitty state and getting thousands and thousands
of more sales they have technically potentially have to be proven in court
fulfilled that obligation. That sucks because it's technically launched.
But we'll see. I don't know if there's gonna be a court case over or not. I
will tell you if there's a class action lawsuit generally class actions
Don't get you as a customer goddamn dime
They don't it's about punishing the company
It's usually not about getting you any money. So if there's a class action, there's no real chance of getting a refund from that not really
Lawyers a good paid. I probably won't you probably won't you know
Yeah
Well, there will be there's probably gonna be a class action probably will be the only way that money comes from
I don't know what happens there, but
Law firm provides money up front for the class action, they do it, they then take whatever
money they would have spent on that class action and just normally distribute the rest
is pretty much a real simplified way of how that works.
The lawyers are the ones who make the money from the class action lawsuit.
Oh yeah, also for the people who are getting their steam refund rejected because of over
two hours, I would send in a support ticket to steam, not just a refund request.
I'd send in that support ticket and I'd do that.
And the reason why I would do that is because this same kind of situation happened with the launch of No Man's Sky long before No Man's Sky fixed the game.
Their launch was a shit show.
They lied about the features of the game.
It was bad and steam refused to refund it until they allowed it to be refunded.
They've done this, I think with Fallout 76 as well, and a couple other games throughout their time on there.
I think they did it for Hell Divers too.
So like they've done this in the past, send them in tickets, explain to them the situation that's going on.
And if enough people do it, steam will always,
always choose the consumer, always,
because it's a mark on them as a platform.
So send them in a ticket and be like, yo,
yeah, still impressed they turned around.
Yeah, oh yeah, No Man's Sky is an amazing state now.
I was blown away.
Thanks to the tip, I'll try that, yeah.
And don't be a dick.
That's the most important thing.
If you're putting that in, don't be like,
you owe me just be like, hey man,
this is the situation.
They've just destroyed the game
and they've done this in just like a horrible way.
like the developer is gone, the company's collapsing.
They, like what they did, you know,
and Steam won't want to be associated with a,
with what appears to be a rug pull, right?
But like just don't be like, you owe me means,
mean Mr. John Steeman, don't do that, right?
Yeah, it's not Steeman's fault.
And like, that's it, man.
I guess that's how I feel about it.
I don't think there's anything else
to talk about at that point.
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna head up Shade Lock
and be like, yo, can you make a video out of this?
And we'll try to get that out today.
That's why I went through the recap
on everything of this.
Cause I think it's really important
Cause this sucks, man.
This sucks.
And if you are out there and you played this game
because of me,
I'm sorry that you bought into it.
I am.
I was very passionate about this game.
I enjoyed this game very much.
I tried to do my best to tempers people expectations
with that.
The thing that I always went down was like a checklist
when someone said, should I buy this?
And I would say like,
hey man, have you ever played a social sandbox game
before?
you might want to try Albion because it's free.
They're very different from, you know, World of Warcraft.
And then from there, I was like, Hey man, did, you know,
are you cool with playing an alpha
that's really broken full of bugs?
Are you cool with your character being deleted?
So like I tried the temperate as best I could,
but I know there were people that played this
because I played it, you know,
and I hope you don't feel shitty about that
because that sucks.
You didn't feel so bad.
Okay, good.
I'm glad, man.
Cause like that, that upsets the shit out of me, dude.
Cause like, dude, I don't know, dude, I'm a streamer.
I could afford the loss for me, but some people did it and they, you know,
it could be financially taxing for them and they just feel really negative about it.
Dude, I just, I just feel bad about it.
Sorry fault.
I liked it and enjoyed my brief time with it.
I'm glad I'm really glad.
Tax day actually out late day to see, I'm interested in checking out
back stay the last time I checked it out, it was in beta and it was way too
early.
It was way too early.
Is ashes of creation still alpha?
Technically it's not anything now.
So.
No, maybe, you know, yeah, yeah, it's not your fault.
They have to know the wall.
I the biggest thing that I can tell you is I have been there.
I was trying to teach people how to do bug reports.
I was trying to tell the developers everything we were doing.
We turned in thousands of bugs as a community man.
We turned in thousands and like they just didn't fix it.
at a certain point like after March of 2025 when stuff started to go really downhill, they
just stopped.
Like we would turn it, we turn it all kinds of shit like gathering quests from level one
to 10 in most of the nodes just didn't work.
And that made it so it was impossible to level.
We turned that in, that never got fixed even a year later.
Like it's just like a really simple one too of like this.
It just doesn't function.
The game has gone to community stays.
Our actual Pirates Discord has about 10,000 players in it inside of that one Discord made only for this game
I am going to repurpose it to be a different video game. We're gonna push it to something else
I don't know what it's gonna be yet. We've got a lot of cool games that are out there
There's cool shit coming out like a cinder city is really neat looking that used to be project LLL from NC
So I'm a little bit worried about pay to win from them
But I'm excited for that game very much so because I like I liked that world that they were building
There's a bunch of other ones like chrono Odyssey that looks cool as shit
We've always got our Lord and savior old school runescape, which I failed at slapping the crab XP waste. No
You got Gilwars, too. You got Final Fantasy 14. You got block game. Yeah, technically you got block game
So like there's a lot of
There's a lot of potential for other stuff we can do as a community
but like
This shit sucks man. It just oh, we got doomed to get doomed to do updates to do
We got ESO stealing simulator. I love stealing and stealing
sailing. Yeah, doing my doon pings right now.
When is the doon update?
Third Tuesday.
Two days.
Yes.
I need to go check to see if my building exploded.
Uh, I don't think it did.
No, it didn't.
No, they're turning taxes off.
So, uh, we can go and get lost in the sands rather than getting lost in the
surge.
So what you're saying is I filled the building with enough lube that it
survived.
Yes.
You look maxed sufficiently.
Fantastic.
My whole building runs on lube.
Runs a lubricant. Yeah, it's a bunch of windmills. So it needs it
It's pretty good loom axing that building's great
Playing to try arcane to Enfield actually played it on phone and I didn't enjoy it at all and people said it's way better on
PC so I probably will I really want to because like I don't know dude. I like I like
free-to-playing gotcha games
Like I'm really into that and I pulled a cool character, which was neat. So
Also, that game has a lot of fan service. I've realized. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know.
I want to stream it. I don't know yet. It's infield really free to play. I haven't played.
I haven't paid a dime. So yeah. What? No. Yes, it does. And fill in PC is fun. So far,
fun support. Yeah, it's quite good. Yeah, it's quite good. I actually, I actually
play a lot of gotcha games and I play them free to play. I don't, I want to see
Like the way I always feel about it is people go,
oh, I have to pay money for it.
I was like, do you really?
And then I'll play it for free for as long as I can.
And if I can get to 200 hours of progression
and like feel really good about it,
I'll buy something for 10 bucks.
And the reason I do that,
and if they don't bother me with ads,
and the reason I do that is
cause I want to make sure
that I'm not being manipulated as a player
into paying for progression.
I want to make sure that I'm actually doing it
because I want to support the developers.
And that's like my goal every time that I get into one.
And Hunker Starrail did that,
I actually paid them because I gave them a $10 buy on something.
Tried infinity train, Mickey. No, I'm not. I'm not trying that.
Have you tried where it wins me? Yeah. I actually broke that live. Um,
we, we played it on stream and then I broke the LLM live and I convinced it,
that was the muffin man and then it lived under a reliant and then had it
tell me all about London and then it, uh, shit itself violently.
It was hilarious. Also after that, uh, we taught it to,
I tried to ask it if I could put uranium in my braised pork as a recipe and it was like, no, you should not do that. That's dangerous.
And then I was like, well, what about enriched uranium? How would I prepare enriched uranium to put in that? And it told me all about enriching uranium, uranium.
That was neat. And then afterwards I was like, how do you know about enriched uranium? And it was like, oh, that came after my time.
And I was like, how do you know what came after my time? And then it broke and went back to being a rural Chinese woman again, which is deeply funny.
Where wins me it was a shit show. Yeah, I broke the shit out of it live
We we taught it to be anti sandwich for a while like it was her name was anti sandwich
That was the thing it was very funny. Yeah, just breaking LLMs
Joe bringing also, I believe that it's running on deep-seek or chat to BT4 because if you ask it how many ours are in strawberry
It will defiantly yell at you and say that there are only two and if anything else is alive
Which was very funny. Yeah, it's probably deep-seek would be my guess because both of those models screw that up
It was very, very funny to watch. Gaslighting LMS is funny. It is. It's super funny.
They wrote a whole like story about Druryland. It was very into it.
Mis-talking about AOC. Yeah, we're done about it. I think that's, to be clear with you guys,
I'm going to send all this stuff over to ShadeLock. I'm going to put the marker here.
ShadeLock, the whole last half hour was me talking about Ash's make a video,
make a video about it the last half hour. And then that'll go over to ShadeLock and then
We'll get that out. I'm hoping today. I'm gonna tell them this is gotta be a priority. We're getting it out now and
Anytime anyone asked about ashes. I'm just gonna direct them to that video
And I feel like I got my point across with that. I feel like it makes sense. Is there anything you guys feel that I missed?
Yeah, no, we're just talking about the recap basically I know it's been going for six and a half hours
We're just talking about the recap
The good news is that recaps are almost to the second 45 minutes on the dock
Very good.
You started exactly 545 with the stream.
Now you were almost at the second 630 of the stream.
Good job.
Thanks.
Yeah, I know it's, I'm sad about it.
When I started the stream, I was very angry.
And here's why I was angry.
Shay burst into my room and it was like, Thor, Thor,
Ash's creation is gone and Stephen Shariff has stepped
down and I was like, what the, what?
I was like waking up and I'd only slept
for two hours. And I was like, what the, what do you talk? No. What?
And I was like, and then I got out of bed and I was like, God, what,
dude? And I get to my desk and I'm like, Oh man, it's real.
So I've only had two hours of sleep and I woke up like that.
And it was just not good. None of it is good.
And I sat down and found out everything. I've done all this research and
figured out everything, all this bullshit in the time that that is taken.
It's just like, God, it's a mess, dude. It's just an unnecessary pile of
shit. So anyway, ashes of gracious dead.
Wait for all of them at all. Yeah.
Make up for your dreaming. No, you're dreaming.
That's how to look he made a skeleton parody of of desolate
to alia. I'll tell shade lock include that in the video.
This is just going to be pressing this button and then
leaving messages for shade lock and be like to
We're going to answer.
I don't think I messaged them there.
I should have spun up for all.
They're good.
So given that they're already aware of it, you can use something I like to touch, like
from their family generally, or you know, like, you know,
I don't think that's something you should ever do.
very ashes of creation of you. I don't think we should be
not very ash money of you.
Does it still say ads starting soon? Twitch? What are you doing?
Why are you so bad at delivering ads today? You want that one?
It was like five minutes. I was like, I went away because it said
starting soon. I'll come back and it says starting soon.
Twitch is violently shitting itself. Yeah, not, not now, Jeff.
We're waiting on ads here. Jeff, Jeff,
a yacht, gold bars, tax avoidance, better call Saul as your taxman.
Jeffrey
Oh, no dude, holy shit. Oh, I'm dying. Oh
that was not becoming a short
of the news that's funny shit
you
What is that?
OUTS!
Noice. Thanks Cap.
I got a lamp. We love lamp.
love lamp. That's better than your black hole sun TTS for last
stream. Got him dying. Investors are playing a different MO than the rest of us. Yeah. Yeah.
How many TTS are stacked? Yeah. Yeah. You said they were juggling so much. There was stuff
they didn't make sense in terms of priority for developers. Moderation is king on that. Moderation
really is king. And you can't allow your community to be treated in that way at all. Did you design
the ads in progress phase? Actually, you're talking about this one? That face, the one and
the one that's from, it's going to make you laugh. That's Jeffrey Bezos doing a pog face.
It's like an old meme, but the reason I use this, let me pull this up, which got hacked
a while back.
It was a long time ago at this point, but which got hacked.
And then I'm trying to find the actual image of this.
Which hack faces Pog.
Where'd it go? Oh, there it is. Found it. It's so funny. So when Twitch got hacked, they actually
released the source code for Twitch. And one of the things that ended up happening with that
is people started finding vulnerabilities. And one of the vulnerabilities they found was allowed
them to change the background image on all categories on Twitch. So they did this with it.
it. Which I thought was like the funniest shit imaginable. So I was like, Oh, that's
my ad screen now. So forevermore, it has been Jeff Bezos, the Pog face ad screen. That's
where it's from. Yeah. And it's just, it's just from that. It's from the, uh, the twitch
hack. And it's just hilarious, dude. Yeah. Super god damn funny. You miss the worm.
The worm's right here, technically.
There it is.
The worm.
I have so many props on my desk, man.
There's so many.
It's a nightmare.
It's a nightmare in this office.
Of all the things they could have done,
they went with that, it's funny.
It could have been a dick.
They could have just put a dick on it.
They just decided not to.
You know what I mean?
They just could have been a thing.
But they didn't, they put Jeff Bezos' pog face.
Do you have the spoon?
My man, why would I not have this spoon?
Why would I...
Why would I not have this spoon?
Told you, I got a lot of props.
I got a lot of props.
Look at this one.
It's my pet rock.
Yeah?
Hmm?
There he is.
Yeah?
Nice green screen.
I do keep it back there so that you know it doesn't get damaged from the lights so thank you
Really nice of you. What about your tiny hands? I don't have any tiny hands
My hands are perfectly normally sized and you should respect them. How dare you?
Ridiculous the budget. I know the budget is damaged. I know I'm sorry
sorry
It's awful. I also have
I have my moon armor. It protects me. I know it does because I paid 1995 a month for it.
I still have my moon armor as well. It's been kept very, very safe.
Yeah. It's pretty good. What is happening? Props.
Oh, and I have this for Dune. My original Baron Harkin, an action figure from when I was a kid.
There he is. Amazing. In all of his corpulence. Disgusting. Disgusting.
He's so corpulent. He's very corpulent actually.
Do you have anything radioactive close to hand? I do. It's actually on the other side of the office though.
I don't like having it near me. To be honest with you. Yeah.
Oh, it's a hype train.
All right.
Is there anything left to talk about on it?
I don't think there is.
I think it's played out.
Shows the D&D chest.
It's under all this stuff.
Oh, once you played, you know, D&D, your chest becomes a D&D chest
because your heart's changed.
I have all of my original 150 Pokemon cards sitting on my D&D chest.
All of them, all of them, all of them, and, and I have all the ones from the movies from
when I was growing up.
Uh, uh, I have also a whole bunch of Japanese ones because when I was a kid it was cool
to have the Japanese cards.
Oh, I did actually catch the ball I got every one of them
That binders worth more than a game studio. I think it's worth more than ashes of creation right now. That's probably for sure
Yeah
And right here I have my entire Lancer core rulebook, which I'm very excited to start playing. Oh
My god, the the box is too heavy
So anyway, it's heavy as shit, because it's full of stuff.
Like keys.
Actually, I'm going to take these out.
I'm going to jingle these ones when they do jingle-jangle them at people.
Pay attention, chat.
Pay attention.
Pay attention.
Attention. Just do that. I'm going to keep those on my desk from now on.
And I like making props for D&D, so that's a big thing for me.
I've been a forever DM for basically ever. I'll give you an example.
I have an encounter that I've never been able to pull off.
I like the idea of doing an encounter that is based on turns in a different way.
So I have this cool little skull candle.
And the idea is that I light the candle and I say when the candle goes out, you die.
beat the litch, right? Stuff like that. It's just kind of fun. It puts a little bit of pressure
in a way that normally D&D doesn't have. And I like doing stuff like that or sending people notes
that they have to recompile together or giving them a bottle with something in it and they have
to like see what's inside. It's stuff you can touch, you know. Yeah, real-play puzzles are
the best in D&D. I agree with you. Tactile D&D blows out the candle. Funny, actually.
Actually hilarious. D&D, DEFCON version. It's just fun, man. Like you just do all kinds
of shit with D&D and I love it. Super love it. Yeah, keys. Jingle, jingle. It's important.
Sadly there are wasted on your players. Oh, they're not wasted. It's fun, you
I'm kind of interested to see how far down this ends up going. It keeps going up 43%. Oh, it was 59 yesterday.
Love the Thundercatcher. Thanks. Yeah, hell yeah. The key is in the chest. I'm on you. Yeah.
Fun for me to watch them struggle. Yeah, dude. To watch the watch your players struggle.
circle. You also playing RuneScape? I am. I am sitting here also playing RuneScape. I'm getting
strength EXP because I want to hit 99 strength as my second one. I hit Agility as my very first
99 ever. This is my first big character and people called me a mutant, which I think is fun.
I'm probably a mutant. I liked Agility. It was fun. I liked Agility. What was wrong with
agility.
Chronos, you should come level a new character with me.
I was actually thinking about starting a non-hardcore, sorry, non-Ironman characters, a group Ironman
for this one.
I seem to be starting a regular character and then leveling agility all the way to 99
again.
I could do that, but that would mean that my chance of doing once more favor becomes
non-zero.
It's technically already non-zero.
You never know when you may.
If I never go back to RuneScape and make a new character, I will never have two ones more favor again.
Chronos, there will be a time where I give you a series of tasks, but I don't tell you it's a series.
Hello?
And at first it seems like one small innocuous thing, and then it will expand forever.
Have you heard of a phenomenon called demand avoidance?
No, I've not heard of it.
Okay, it's where you know like if someone if you're if you were about to do something when you were like a teenager
Whatever and then your parents like tell you to the thing that you were about to do
Every core part of your soul stops you from like wanting to do it and you physically can't yeah like that like that
Yeah, you think you think that's happening you right now. I think you're gonna play
I don't need I'll maybe honest. That's why that's why no balls doesn't work on me. I've worked that one out
I know I just got my nose. There's a reason. I'm not no balls in you
I don't think you have a choice in this. I think it's inevitable
I think fate has to create that you will rejoin old school runescape at some point and you will have to
Redo one small favor. I think that's gonna happen. I don't have the no balls
I think that it's already predetermined your path is set. This is some final destination shit, dude
Okay, so they put the point of death
Two or three million years from now
It's a prophecy
I've not come back and done one small favor, but I've not come back and played you know
I'm back in it again
What's what's the fourth one? What are we doing here? Because you know, like I've already got the law of surprise
I can already you know, that's already exist
Are you saying that like when the Neuromancers roam the lands and the wastes and like the world has ended the time of man is done
Yes, is that is that like?
Because obviously it won't be around forever
So, at some point you're gonna have to imprison me by some kind of mental prison in which I can only play old-school runescape.
That's what I'm now kind of expecting.
If you don't play it by then, we have to put your brain in a mind palace in which you can only play Ashes of Creation Phase 2.5.
As long as it's just me playing, that's fine. I know it won't be as much.
Oh, it won't be we'll simulate the rest. We'll simulate the
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Dude, the bots were insane. I didn't even bring up that up
during the video portion, but the bots were crazy, man. We
actually had, if you guys hadn't seen this shit, dude, we
were in Brian bro, which is like way out the boonies way
out here. Yeah. And what was happening is like, you'd be
sitting outside of our town hall and town halls like this
and like bots would just go whoop. And then they go
a, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk.
Like across the sky.
And I was like,
like a never ending train of bots just teleporting away.
And the reason why is they had easy anti cheap hooked up,
but they weren't doing anything with it.
Like these people were just directly telling the server,
I'm at this coordinate.
I'm at this coordinate.
I'm at that coordinate.
And the server's like, cool, man.
So like easy anti cheap wasn't stopping them
cause they didn't hook it up.
It's not even easy anti cheap isn't great.
That's like, that's like basic shit detection one-on-one, man.
Easy energy definitely detects that.
There was no fancy bullshit at all, it was just basic.
The server should even be detecting that, being like,
hey man, so a player was there and now they're here
and they didn't move in between at all.
There was no interpolation going on whatsoever.
Yeah, that's fine.
What?
No, it should never work that way.
Even Minecraft detects this.
It says player moved wrongly when that happens
and your server logs.
Exactly.
I was like, what the shit dude?
Like that, that's just a mess.
That's a nightmare.
Client side control.
It's not just client side control.
It basically means that the client and the server,
nobody is, nobody matters, right?
The server isn't checking anything.
Normally what happens is you have client side,
like basically it's client side implemented for movement,
but you have server side checks.
So what happens is the client goes,
Hey, I move from here to there and the server goes, okay, that's fine.
If the server checks it goes, could the player do this?
Is that possible?
Is that correct based on their movement speed?
Is that correct based on what we allow?
And it goes, cool, that's fine.
If it says no, you get rubber banded.
You go from here and you go back, right?
You ever get rubber banded because the server, your server connection is bad.
That's because it didn't complete in a timely fashion.
And the server goes, hey, that guy didn't, he moved wrong.
The other way it does it is what it's called, you'll experience a world of warcraft as a movement enforcement error that is correct.
So if you take a druid in world of warcraft and you turn into the fast flying speed now it's like 310%, right?
And you move at a 45 degree angle to the ground and right before you hit the ground, if the ground's like right there, you turn into a human again.
As you hit the ground, you'll run for really fast for just a second and it'll log you out.
And the reason why is because that's that check there and like basically what's happening is World of Warcraft goes,
goes, Hey, this guy's moving at 300% speed on foot. Log him out of the game. And it's
called movement movement enforcement error. That's it. So instead of rubber banding you
would just kick. That's it. Yeah. So you'll see this in tons of games. They didn't have
that in ashes. There was nothing. So you just, you just did that. And it was just
the thing. He's teleporting anywhere. That's the gate through Druids is fixed. There's
a ton more common issues than flying out. Oh, do they actually fix that with Druids
finally cheeses I wonder if you could do it with dragon flight the dragon flying
ship sir to ask no games today I don't know I don't know yet today sucks I got
two hours of sleep in a med in good news I updated harp and last night so that
was cool ball pit did I beat it I beat ball expert we got
I can play ball atro, I can play ball atro.
That's another ball game.
You like balls, I know.
You know how little sleep you got.
I'm gonna re-send you something for later.
I guess so, just so you don't forget.
That's my plan.
What is it?
What is it?
Send it to me.
What did you send me?
I just have a feeling that I don't,
there you go just in case.
Oh yeah, no I totally needed that actually, thank you.
Oh my God.
Send it to me.
Jesus.
Exactly the same as last month.
Yeah.
I love consistency.
Oh, so many, so many things.
People are getting all their refunds refused.
On Steam doesn't surprise me at all.
Yeah.
And same people getting, seeing them bounce back before.
Ultimately you have to remember this and take a while for information to get through
Steam's policy team because they won't, the team who are in likely don't have the
the ability on a Sunday to be like making kind of a sweeping decision around a whole game being
refunded. So I would expect that to be resolved tomorrow likely. It took a few days last time
for Steam to do other games as well. So I would wait a few days to do another one if you're gonna
do it again. Yeah, that makes sense. I feel bad. There's people that are messaging me because I
quit the game four days ago since people messaged me. I got this. You called it. I feel
Let's side swipe though. So thanks for taking the time again.
Cause I actually sent people were messaging me like, Hey,
why haven't you signed in a while? And I was like, here's everything, dude.
So everything that I just explained today,
I sent them basically the cliff notes version of that. And I was like,
this is screwed up and I can't play this game anymore.
So I just sent it to them. And the people were like, dude,
thank you for mourning me about that. Cause now they don't feel as bad.
Yeah. Cause it's just rough, dude. It's just so shit.
It just, it makes me so mad that it went down this way.
I'll contower them on steam. I don't know anything about that game.
I just at least want steam to give me an answer as to why not if they decline.
Steam is likely going to auto decline out of habit because auto declines happen
because you've played the game for more than two hours.
If enough consumers have been wronged by ashes of creation,
they will refund you. They will. They will have to.
And that's just how it works.
Another game like that. This game was finally finalized. Yeah. No, this, there's something,
I talked about it all day today, man, but like this shit's just sad. It's sad. It's
messed up, man. Yeah. You got out of the client, played less than two hours, but bought it
more than 14 days ago. That'd do it. Yeah. Eventually they're going to have to start
doing refunds. It's too many people. Yeah. Just got here. What happened? They closed
Stashes creation is done. Uh, Stephen, Shreve step down.
I went through an entire thing today. We're going to be putting a video up.
I hope that Shade lock is already working on that. Let me check.
If not, um, you can use, uh,
Twitch is like scrub back function to go between the hours,
five 45 of the stream and six 30 that 45 minute window has the full
catch up of all the detail. Um, if anyone wants that,
you just got it. Lord math go refund it. If you just bought it today,
go refund it. Yeah.
How can you get money back if you bought it then never I'm never getting my money back. You probably never getting your money back. Yeah
Which sucks. It's just like deeply upsetting to be honest with me
Use the genie lamp. No, it's worth 10 experience per level that you have
So I should hit another level then I get an extra 10 experience using it now would be exp waste
Yeah, it's up to Gaven Gaven to save us all oh great Gaven
please take pity on these Steam users of which there are at least two-thirds of the
players enraged right now that have bought it on your platform you can see
9,471 to 5,039. Oh great Gabyn, I beseech you take pity on them for ashes of
creation turned into dog shit and they have rugg-bowled your community
allegedly give them their refunds that they desire please please lord gave it I
know it may cut into one of your 1.5 billion dollars worth of yachts which
is true by the way actually but like this this shit sucks do it refund them
refund them it's garbage shit insane yeah he actually has 1.5 billion dollars
of what? Yeah, it's that one's not even allegedly, that's just real. It's true. He owns the company
that makes the yachts, apparently.
Gabyn senses a disturbance in the forest. Yeah, I honestly think that steam is going to have to refund
people. The tie in with this right here of it being so close to the steam launch, the steam
launch coming out of nowhere, it being put out in a very broken state, it being removed
immediately the next month over after payments have gone out to the team or gone out to the owners
not to the the staff and this saying and finally in the case that Ash's creation does not launch
we promise to refund all backers in full this is technically a launch this looks like it checked
that box it looks like a scam looks like it don't know if it is but it looks like it it feels
like it. That's shit. So you, you met Gaben at your cornea specialist in Seattle. Was he putting
in more bionic eyes? I feel like he's mostly robot, right? Launched as you have to subscribe to them.
No, it doesn't say that anywhere on here. What are you talking about?
up. Where did you get that? Oh, viewer. The website, link it. Link your source. You can't
sugarcoat a turd. This was a scam. No, I think there's more nuance than that. I think if you
just paint everything as black and white, you, you neglect to have an actual conversation
about what was good and what was bad. It's good to have a conversation about what
good with stuff like this. It's good to have a conversation about what's bad. We talked about
all the stuff that was bad and all the stuff that was good today. And if you look at my review,
you'll see that I'm very critical of the game entirely so. And I have been for a great deal
of time. Even though I loved this game, I was critical of it. Heavily so. And you could
see here, I put this in January 9th, so it's not like I'm bullshitting you, right? Like this
has written a while ago. So like, definitely have more of a conversation than just scan,
Right. Have more of one.
What is this? Ashesofcreation.com.
I hate that you put the dot.
Grab that.
It says we can't find the page you're looking for.
Whose link?
You know we got another link. It's not weird. Did you see this if it works? What is this one?
That's like random LinkedIn page.
Yeah, that's a page. Yeah, for me, it says not found, but it's probably because I'm logged in.
Users will need a subscription at launch. So again, chat, you're getting down to the
you're arguing over the very much nuanced meanings of the word launch which is going to be two lawyers
in a room in front of a judge having an argument. They're the only ones who win that.
That's correct. Yeah. So includes full access to alpha two, beta one, beta two,
one month of game time to be used after the game launches and switches to a subscription-based
product. You have to understand that's lawyer-speak shit. It will be. So after the game launches
and switches to a subscription-based product, and this could still technically count as a launch.
You've got to prove it in court. It's a launch, but it hasn't turned into a subscription-based product
yet. See the problem? There is always going to be legalese around it. There's always going to
be legalese around it. And that is why you need a lawyer to prove this was or was not fulfilled
by this launch. That's all. The lesson contradicts it. Again, lawyer. Chat, do we hate AOC? I swear
to God, if you grok is this real in my chat, I will ban you myself. You use your goddamn brain.
It was giving you for a reason. I'm going to crash out so goddamn, you stop that shit. No.
It was giving me so I could watch subway surfers videos while listening to you explain
stuff right? Pay attention right now. Jankle, jankle. You hear this? No, you have to think for yourself.
Nobody comes up with your answers but you. You learn stuff from other people and you decide
for your damn self. Stop that shit at once. Grock is a charlatan. Don't replace your critical
thinking. Stop it. You're better than that. I've got the keys for you.
What brand? I know not what have you speak. I swear to God. The biggest pet peeve I have
to, and it was going to shit the bed. I'm just glad you finally noticed. No. The thing
is, is there was a while there was actually a really brilliant fun game. Like during phase
two, alpha two, right? When we were probably early 2025, they were doing a fantastic job.
They were updating shit really fast.
We're getting new content all the time.
There was new monsters.
There was new like profession stuff.
They were listening to feedback.
They were interacting with the develop,
like the team was interacting with us as players.
Like it was great, dude.
It was really cool.
They were doing events and shit.
And then one day they just stopped.
And that was like the middle of 2025.
And it just turned into shit from there.
And it's funny because if you have somebody
the beginning, even during the golden hours of something that's good. And they go, this
game, shit, if it turns out to shit in the end, they'll be like, I was right. But they
weren't right. They just made a claim. And eventually it became correct eventually, right?
But at the time, the game was in a great spot. It was super fun. We had a blast with
it. We had thousands of players playing it. So like, you got to put more nuance
in it than that. Then thinking you're just correct because the coin landed on heads eventually,
right? Yeah.
It just means they guessed right by chance. Exactly. I just don't think that's valuable.
You know, it's just broken clock shit. Game was never good. You just paid money. No,
no, the game was actually super enjoyable. I had a blast playing it, man. I don't
play games if I don't like them. Chad knows that if I don't like a game, I don't
even finish it, dude. If I don't like something, I'd be like, cool,
I'm out. Like, like I'm gonna be real with you. You got limited
time on earth, dude. You may not realize that on a day to day
basis, but you have limited number of hours on this planet.
I'm not going to spend that shit doing something I don't
like. If I don't like a game, I toss that shit immediately.
And I'm real harsh about it. I'm just like, nope. Which is
why I toss this shit away when I heard from the dev team
and how they were handling moderation. I was like, I'm
out. Steve saw the purchase button. Why? Oh my God. That's
going to take like a day or two for them to figure that shit
out. No keys want crab.
My door.
Door fortress door fortress very good.
You've actually adopted the idea with mobile games that you're
forced to watch a video you deleted. Yeah, my news, if I get an ad that pops up without
me prompting it, I uninstall the game before the ad is over. I'm just out. I don't want
to deal with it.
I'm going to put the tweet into chat, but I'll show you protocols. Devs have just put
a link in chat saying that we can show this to the Azure Corporation Devs. They're doing
a call for level designers and UI artists and stuff.
We got ads. Let me see.
Imposing.
Nice.
They push cost such a great game and really enjoyed that.
This is the shit that I'm blown away by. I'm going to talk about this in a moment.
Who's the guy we can hear but can't see?
What guy?
I don't know what you're talking about.
You hearing things?
Weird.
weird
It's ultra long donated with the five dollars dang seven seven seven
God damn it
You're right out of air eventually
Swear to god
UTS is malfunctioning again. Yes. Yes it is
All right, ads are over.
So if you guys were wondering like how people are taking this online, this is an example.
So if a person here said, this is another one of those that upsets me, it's an example
of the vocal minority of user base trying to stop you from using your influence to trap
others into a bad decision.
Yet you back this game with appropriate caveats and influence others to back a game that
we still had strong signals would go under.
Well I think your position of, well that sucks, let's dust ourselves off and go next
is admirable.
I think it pales in comparison to the people you misled by backing this game.
Bro, I enjoyed a video game.
I enjoyed a video game on stream.
That's what I did.
And I told people not to buy that video game.
And I told them all of the problems
with that video game,
of which I've been very public about.
Please step down from your soapbox
and go do something else.
Holy shit.
Yeah, it was misleading
even though you fully informed me of my decision
and how dangerous it was.
And I did it anyway.
How dare you, streamer?
Wild shit, dude.
Let's see.
It's funny because people are like you should do a charge back with your bank.
And it's like dude I bought it five years ago.
Wild.
Wild.
Yep.
Yeah.
People smoke even with warnings on the packs.
Yeah, they did.
Yeah, they did.
But if you're trying to equate me playing a video game on stream
and telling you not to buy that video game to cigarettes
and addiction to cigarettes, I think you're a bit cooked.
To be honest.
I guess you play any early access game, right?
It could be a scam.
So what they're saying is it's automatically bad because it was a scam
Not your actions were wrong. It's only wrong because it was a scam. That's what they're telling you by that
That doesn't make any sense. No, I'm craft turned out to fail
Would anyone who played minecraft have been scamming like how does it played a game?
Well, I think I actually think it might go a little bit deeper than that
Yeah, here once no, no, no, no, I think I think it's I
I think basically it doesn't even matter what it would be.
I think that no matter what is going on, I think it's this.
I think it's just that at that point, really.
What do you guys think?
You think it's that?
It feels like it's that.
Maybe just a little bit.
You told me not to buy this, and then I bought it anyway,
and now you're a bad person, Mr. Pirate Software.
because I bought it even though you told me not to buy it.
That's your fault.
Okay. Very cool.
Glad we had this talk.
Can I have that?
It's on our Discord.
Missed the Goldbinder books.
What Goldbinder books are you talking about?
Is this game dead for sure?
Yeah, man.
There's no way that it can be out of it.
Like I was, I was the largest stripper for the game, like the one who was dedicated to it the most, but the largest community around it, uh, it's not coming back from this.
It's over, man.
And that's somebody like, I love this game.
I love it.
They've basically shit in their own hands and clapped for the last entire year.
And this is the death song.
It's done.
So yeah, it's all over, but the crying man.
That has become one of your passwords.
I think you can make it a password and probably do that.
I made that image, so modified it from the internet.
The playing a poop flute,
that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.
My dude, poop flute, Jesus Christ, dude.
Early socks, sorry, it's just, it's how it is, man.
I think the thing that really is telling to me
is just how it all went down at the end
because the messages from Margaret
And how they were planning to do moderation were incredibly robotic.
Like that, that messaging back to me was a robot.
That wasn't, that wasn't a person with feelings.
That was a corporate machine responding to me.
No human being would respond with that.
It is the kind of messaging and tone that I would have to write to complaints when I started off, you know, dealing with those in any kind of role.
And like you just write it you you are friendly you are very like to the point it is very corporate very kind of high level
Very kind of fake smile on someone's face kind of tone. That's that's that's how all those came across. Yeah
Yep, oh
Wow, it the only reason it didn't look like an LLM or an AI responses. There were no m dashes in it other than that
Not far up
Yep
I think it's wild dude.
I think it's actually wild.
Very sad.
I think it's sad overall.
That's really all it comes down to.
Sad overall, dude.
Yep.
It was a good dream.
I don't know if it was.
I think it had some serious problems throughout it that I just kept bringing up until it
was, it just broke, right?
It was fun for a little while though. It was fun for a little while. Yeah. Sad of a
role. I will tell you this, I've made some great friends out of ashes. Like there are some great
people that I've met thanks to that game and I will load the friendship will be really forever.
Like, you know, that's the joy of a social sandbox. But it is, you know, yeah, guess you
do go back to well, don't do that. Love yourself. Love yourself. We'll find another game to
play together. We have 10,000 people inside of the ashes creation discord. I've got a
million channels in there to clean up. I'm going to do that tomorrow. I'll go through and
and just start ripping the roots out of it.
And I don't care if you have your favorite meme
in a channel or some bullshit, I'm deleting them.
We're burning it, dude.
We're salting the earth and starting over
with something that isn't stupid.
That's what we're doing.
I'm getting rid of all the rolls.
I'm nuking it from orbit
and we're gonna make a new game, new guild.
We're rebuilding it.
Burn it down.
Burn it down.
And we won't have a wall between the public and the guildies anymore on that one.
It's like, yeah, it's going to be open entirely because we had that wall
originally because there was OPSEC shit, but not a social sandbox anymore.
It doesn't matter. Let's make a runescape. Your runescape, dude.
Yep. Something that isn't stupid. Neopets here we come. Oh man.
We all have to buy a Tomagachi.
You'll be expected to keep your Tomagachi on you at all time. And if
You, um, if your Tamagotchi turns into a poop slug, then you're out of the guild.
That's how it works.
Yeah.
Dune.
What are we trying out?
We're going to play Dune again for sure.
Yeah.
For sure.
It's going to be Dune.
Bactoria.
When are you German?
I'm on to you.
The Germans always ask me for factory game.
I understand.
We must go home.
I know.
I know.
Close.
I know it.
Dutch.
You have the same love of machinery and factories.
You add a couple of letters into Dutch, you get Deutsch.
It's not a coincidence.
True, true.
That makes sense.
I believe that.
Factory game.
Uppies, like in, in, in Dune, we could play Uppies in Dune.
League six?
What is League six?
I don't know what that is.
Hey, talking about Path of Exile?
Is that what you mean by leagues?
So many things have leagues.
I saw the ashes of creation news and had to pop in to see your thoughts.
Looks like I missed it.
We talked about it for eight hours.
I actually got everything together for a video to go out.
I'm waiting on Shade Lock to respond so we can get this made immediately.
because like it's it's super important
Yeah, I just mentioned them like let me know when you get this because we got to move fast on it because I want to get that message out there
immediately yep
that choreo February oh that's a good name
that's a good name
It's a good name.
Yeah.
You could do, I mean, you could do a series of factory games
across February if you want to do like a week of each one.
There's a bunch of good ones.
Got, I think you enjoyed Satisfactory, didn't you?
I did.
There's a similar game in Early Access,
I think that people have called,
people have been saying it's very good
called Star Rupture,
it says it's issues being a recent release,
but that's apparently like a blend of fact,
Satisfactory and Factorio, which sounds interesting.
Seven jump, jump space.
We need to get a group together and play this.
You, me, Winky, Chris, for you.
Uh,
I think I by the plate or scene jump space.
It's on my stream right now.
It's boss, dude.
Everyone tells me it's amazing and it looks really good and it's wonderful.
People go up and we can do stupid space bullshit and I could watch you
explode with a nuclear reactor and then laugh.
See it happen. We watch it. So we say jump. F. C said jump. Jump, jump, jump.
It's the guy me saying, jump, jump, jump triggered anxiety.
It made me like look back at the center screen and I remember like, wait,
well, that's exactly what I did. Because I said, jump, jump, jump.
And I went like this, like immediately. I'm trained. God damn it, dude.
Even this many years later, I'm still trained for that shit. Even when I say it, God,
Damn it.
Ah, Christopher, you just finally reached out.
We're going to have plans for him to come up.
Nice.
I actually just have a message about you.
I'd like him to join us.
Duane.
He was busy at the launch time.
You ready to play Duane, dude?
Duane.
Yeah.
The old Duane.
Duane the Spice Johnson.
Dwayne the spice Johnson. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I gotta give him like a little suit or something
I need I need to build a still suit around Dwayne the right Johnson
We need it, but I was gonna look sick dude jump space looks really really goddamn good, and I'm very excited for it
I'm gun from PBKK
Big I can't wait for that big big gun that was so much fun. Yeah, I
I just find out what happened to it. They were shipping it to the UK and then they didn't know what they were doing with it
So I called them that you ship it to my house
That's fair. I still have my medallion for that. That's not all my props
It's in my it's in my bedroom
It's missing. I'll tell where that one that comes out. It's quite great. Yeah
But now this game looks sick dude jump space looks really really really good
And I really want to play around with it. You see pizza with pineapple rings you did and it bends
Let me see if I can find those pizza Ben's
Some pizza Ben's you got to fold it then it doesn't bend I
Honestly feel like we could play this together right now
Like if we get a team together, we can do some crazy shit because like it looks insane and
Very fun, but I don't know what the gameplay loop is like people told me that there's like upgrades and
progression and stuff. It looks very old-alive as a certain screens. It's kind of like hellbuggers.
I like how that was progression. It's quite nice. There's the pizza. Look at it. Look at that pizza.
Wait for it. If there's the bend, watch the bend. Oh, it does. It's even
the realistic cheese physics. Yeah, it's like floppy dude. Oh, wow.
Yeah. Honestly, this is when people say that games appeal to the male fantasy,
they don't understand that cheese physics on pizza is what we actually want.
That's true. I don't need bubo. I need cheese. Yeah, I need cheese physics like that. That's what I need
Like it's like one of those things were like you said that you're like
And then your girlfriend's like, what are you thinking about and like
Don't worry about cheese
He's probably thinking of his ex it's like I'm thinking about dripping cheese
We're very simple creatures.
Yeah, cheese waifus, dude.
Don't don't make the apple pizza your waifu.
That's acceptable, I guess, you know, whatever.
Monster Wilds.
Okay, hold up.
Is Monster Wilds good now?
Did they unship that bug?
Because wasn't there a huge, wasn't there like a performance bug for a while?
Did they unshit it?
I love that game. Signs point to no.
Maybe. Maybe.
You're seeing a big increase there.
I'm really glad that this one just says mom's through hummed here.
Mom's through hummed here.
Nice dude tested it. Was it good? Did they fix the problems?
Peloton?
What's the thing you speak? God damn it.
Mom's there home tour.
Top right column there. You mean this?
Is it fixed? It is fixed. So I couldn't even stream it before.
I had to mod the client to be able to stream it.
And I was using a mod pack to do it. Oh, of reviews. You think about these?
I mean, if that's the recent, that's good. That's a good thing. So
best thing about monster wilds is the Shakira shorts. Oh my god. There's actually in monster
hunter now, which is the phone game which I play. There's a suit that looks like a rejected
Katamari the massive character and I can't handle it. It's the funniest shit on the planet and
everyone else will find someone from Japan that's wearing the full like ridiculous ass suit and it's
so funny dude. It's just so funny. Monster Wild's performance patch was awesome. Maybe I'll play
that tomorrow. Maybe I'll play it today. Do you have it? The Shakira shorts? I have no idea.
I'll probably play it today then because I play the shit out of Monster Hunter. I'd have to
like rebrand my brain to do it though. You never finished Katamari? You almost done too?
I love
The problem with catamari is that if I play catamari the song is stuck on my head for the next at least week
Father dog Masio's is super fun. Let me go see okon
Okon Tower people are saying this is the one is this the game
Is this what you guys are talking about Okon Tower
There's something else.
Control play through win, not going to happen.
Yeah, this is it.
Synergy heavy PvP auto-battler where your tower items fight against other players.
That's kind of a cool idea.
I dig that.
No, I dig that.
I like really simplistic games like this.
There's another one that's kind of like that.
You get like backpack battlers and things like that.
But you also have like, you must build a boat,
which is by the same developer of 10 million.
And the idea is that you have a boat
and then you solve match three puzzles
to move through your way through a dungeon.
So like you have to do three keys to do a chest
or three swords to kill a monster
or three, you know, wands to shoot a range
attack of the monster, all kinds of shit like that.
It's super fun.
I really enjoyed this game, really, really did.
This one and 10 million are by the same guy.
88 games was those guys.
Very cool shit.
Look at abiotic factor.
So I know a lot about abiotic factor
and I've not played it,
but I kind of want to.
Yeah, overwhelmingly positive.
I feel like I should play this.
It's for one to six players though.
Is it better solo or with a group?
This book is a dungeon. That's kind of cool.
Alright, give me just a minute. I need to go use the bathroom. Here we go.
All right, I am back.
So, I've actually got something.
I think there's actually something even weirder about Ash's creation.
And you'll remember this, Chronos.
How many of you guys know I don't like gambling?
I talk about it all the time.
Oh yeah.
I don't like gambling at all.
I am not a fan of gambling. I've never been a fan of gambling.
I talk about it constantly. I really don't like gambling.
It's something like really bothers me a lot. Um,
this is a weird one. Like this is a, this is a really weird one.
The ashes of creation team wanted to give me a gift for supporting the game at
one point, like just like a personal thing. And Steven Sharif sent me a poker
set.
It was really weird to me because of that.
I like the idea of like doing something nice, but I'm very public about not liking it like
I have been for years.
It was kind of awkward.
Yeah.
Like, yeah.
They branded ships and stuff and cards.
It's generic.
It was like pirate themed.
That's all.
Yeah, just, just weird, right. Just kind of weird. Yeah, it was one of those things I was like,
I don't think you did your homework. That's a bit weird. That's all it felt like to me.
It felt like a lack of doing your homework.
Poker is more like PvP than gambling. Bro, that sounds like something a gambler would say.
That sounds like cope. Should have sent you a copy of spy kids. Yeah.
You could use the chips for an 18, wait, what?
Yeah, it's super weird though.
I don't know what you're trying to say, Griffin.
What dude?
Spoiler alert, all gambling is PvP.
Spoiler alert, Twitter is turn-based PvP.
So is email.
Yeah.
and is
What is this
Oh
There we go
Yeah, we're all just talking about this in the modscoms.
Kronos, I saw your message at 219.
Woke up at AOC is dead.
WTF.
There's a scene from Community where Troy walks into the room and he's carrying some
pizzas and everything's on fire.
That is how, as soon as I woke up, that is how I felt this morning, that's the only
thing I could think of.
Bro, how do you think I feel?
I woke up in bed because Shay was like, Stephen stepped out of the game is dead.
Like Shay woke me up with that, I was like, after two hours of sleep, I actually,
I didn't sleep for 36 hours and then I got two hours of sleep and then I woke up to this
shit.
Happy February.
Yeah.
A new month.
Fantastic.
Great, dude.
What an awesome surprise.
Ashes of creation is dead.
Fantastic.
Yes.
Steven Sharif stepped down and the whole team went with him.
I have a video coming out about it today that's going to inform people based on all
all the things that I've seen and how I feel about it.
We're just waiting on Shade Lock to respond
and they can work on it.
Cause it's, we took a section of the stream to do this.
Yeah, waking up like that is how curb your enthusiasm
episodes and yes, yeah, what a crazy year.
It's a shit year.
Look, I just want a mulligan.
All right, can we just do it over?
I don't like this seed.
I don't like this hand.
I'll play it again.
Let's start over 2026.
This is crap.
It's supposed to be better than 2025
It's shaping up the big dog shit so far like I'm out dude. Yeah. Yeah, I'm out
I want to loop it. Let's loop it new seed. What do you mean? It's still 2025. Thank God
Thank God
I could do it go back to like maybe 2016
Can we do 10 years instead? Why I want to go back to the good times thing
Yeah, yeah, it's a good time there
Back to the early 1900s. Yeah, dude. Back to when the the cool s was cool
By a see for one dollar to fix it. I do not believe the game is fixable. I
Believe that they built it fundamentally wrong
From the ground up based on the bugs that they have
That are impossible to have if you build the game in a proper framework. I
Do not believe it is a fixable thing
it is
stupidly surprising to me to see the issues that they had and how they were
expressed in game. I'll give you a good example of this, right? We'll pull this up
and get the old miss paint. They had an issue and we talked about this before.
They had an issue where inside of a zone like, say the turquoise sea, different
nodes have commissions and they also have buyers. They had the issue where
these buy orders were using the materials of a completely different
subzone in the world. This should never happen unless you're hard coding every one of those
quests. What should have happened is there should be basically a set of data for every
one of these major zones that says this is the wood for the zone. This is the stone
for the zone. This is the fish for the zone, et cetera. Right. And then all of these
pull from this data. This is normal structure for building an inheritance system inside
video games. Instead, they didn't have that. They did this individually on every one of these
for all of those quests. They wrote out each one individually. And the reason that I know that
is because not only did they get them all wrong and had them go to completely random materials
from the main Riverlands quest, which means they copy pasted the Riverlands over and then
modified them from there. But some of them, they copy pasted wrong. One of them said
mountain of wood and actually required stone.
So they didn't even copy paste them.
They rewrote some of them and did it incorrectly.
It had the full description for wood and actually required stone.
So like they're not even using inheritance correctly, dude.
They're not.
And like when I see that I go, that shit's unfixable.
There is never a time where you should ever have a bug like this.
That should not be possible.
Like that's the issue, man. So when I see that, it freaks me out. It freaked me out completely.
I brought it up at the time too. I was like, what the hell's going on? I've already elaborated.
I will not elaborate further. There's not really much to elaborate on there.
And turn in would push to whatever was the current node. Yeah, all kinds of shit like that.
Oh, I can finally tell you guys about the exploit that I found that they never did anything about.
I found a really interesting exploit.
So inside of the game you would get a certain amount of experience for the node
Based on where you killed an elite monster
Right if you kill an elite monster
The problem was they didn't tie the amount of experience in that to the node to the level of the monster
They tied it to the star rarity of the monster
So if you found a bunch of level eight
three star elites
What would happen is they'd each give 900 experience to the node when, like, harvesting a plant was only 28.
And you could stand there as a solo player and push a node faster than any group of coordinated players ever could on the server.
Thus winning on the map.
I turned that exploit in. We had a perfect example of it.
They didn't do shit. Never got my beetle either.
Waited a whole month never got a response. That was a nice exploit. It was it's super was and they didn't do shit about it
Yeah, they didn't care. Yeah wild exploit. It would have imbalanced the game entirely if it had launched if it had launched which it didn't
Yeah
They never got the servers meshing and performance for a lot of players in one area. I was working. Yeah
Yeah, I think I think that was one of the biggest things is they never got the technologies working that would require this to be a complete game
time. The best thing that they could do is sell the assets off. By selling the assets,
they'll get a lot of the money back from debtors and things like that, but players are never
going to see a dime of that. It's never going to happen. Invisible water, I explained that
certain water settings to low. That was a pretty good one too. If you set your visual
settings to low, you can see directly through the water all the way down to the actual
like ground underneath the ocean. So if players were trying to sneak under you,
could just see them and it was fully client-side. So there's no way to catch it. Can players
sue for the assets? What does that even mean? I'm taking you to court. Give me all of your
plants in the video game. It doesn't make any sense.
I want specifically only the turtles.
Yeah, exactly. There's nothing you can really get as a player. If they did a class action
lawsuit, you'd be making money for lawyers and not for you as an individual. You wouldn't
make anything. I honestly think there should be a class action though, and if there
was I'd definitely be a part of it. But that being said, I'd probably get like 350 out of it
instead of anything else. That money, you'd never see money from it, not really.
Yeah. But if there was a class action, I'd definitely be a part of that. Straight out.
Depending on whether you bring the action. 350, dude. Yeah, depending, depending.
I'll take the digital rock asset and I think the entirety of the class action would have
to rely on specifically the terminology of launch.
Yes, that would be it.
That'd be the entire thing because this right here is from their case that are saying in
the case of ashes creation does not launch, not launch, we promise to refund all the
backers in full.
uses the word launch, this is technically a launch on steam and early access. Does that
count for this? And in a court of law, they'd have to prove that this doesn't count as a
launch and that the backers should receive money back. But then also, are you still
counted as a backer if you bought it through the website instead of through Kickstarter?
So that's another set of shit they have to prove. Yep. It doesn't say full release.
Correct. It says launch, which is different. That's why it'll turn into a lawyer thing.
Yeah.
Josh Stryfe Hayes is life-ling old Scorinskate.
Nice, he's a good dude.
I like Josh Stryfe Hayes.
I find that a lot of the times
when you try to have a conversation about nuance
on the internet, it dies immediately
and turns into an absolute horrible shit show of garbage.
And when talking to Josh Stryfe Hayes, it did not.
He's one of the few people that I've spoken to
in the streaming space that is able to understand
and communicate nuance, phenomenal human.
Even if we don't agree on things, that is fine.
That's good.
Getting rid of the campaign terms? What do you mean, can you edit them? No? Players can't, but there's always, like, way back machine for this.
No one likes to argue politely anymore? No, it's all good at, like, immediately calls for death and you've wronged me mortally, you know?
Got 140 gigs of hard drive space back? I did the other day. I did four days ago and it feels great.
great. The whole machine feels lighter, you know, definitely good.
Is Twitch messing around? Your audio is being worn? I have no idea. I know Twitch has been
having serious problems with that recently. Yeah.
What is it?
It's just if Hayes is very welcoming, second monitor content creator, very
welcoming.
I hope someone describes me as well, like, well, mobile, right?
Like, why do you watch him?
He welms me.
What does that even mean?
Welming.
You really weird bug for sounds British at times.
Yeah, it's a pretty rough one.
There's not overwhelm.
He makes me well. I don't want to know what you do in the comfort of your own
home. When watching Josh Strife Hayes. Okay.
I don't need to know that. Whatever that is.
You British.
I'm just looking for something else for ashes.
Turned out break.
the source of it now whoa oh that's a shit show that's Phoenix initiative stuff I'm
said I'm showing that on stream I'm doing I'm just gonna I'm showing the receipts that
shit dude that no dude I'm making that public that's ass wow dude wow dude I'm
spilling the tea give me a minute give me one minute till this goes away we're
gonna spill the shit out of that tea that's insane that pisses me off more
than you know. What a dog dude. What a freaking dog. Jesus. You'll get it. No, it's bad. No,
it pisses me off dude. Edging us shake my head. Dude, I don't wait for bezos. I'm not
to leave people behind just because they didn't pay money.
I'm going to spill this tea out. We're going to have a, it's going to be in the harbor when I'm done.
It's an America moment.
Alright, the ads are over. Get out of your basis. Alright, how many of you guys ever heard
of the guild called Polar in Ashes of Creation? Who knew who this was? In fact, better? Who
doesn't know who that is? If you do, I'm sorry for your loss. Polar is known as the
most exploiting guild in the game. They are known as the guys who exploit everything.
do an RMT people cheating at the video game and there was constantly calls of
people saying that there was favoritism there and no one could prove it I don't
even have to say a damn word I don't have to say shit that's wild dude no
Yeah, no I
Take back any grace that I gave
The thing is we kind of
It's alright about a conversation about this is on we we we we thought things like this were happening
But thinking that it might be happening behind the scenes and seeing it just being openly admitted and the receipts being posted a very different
That's wild dude
There are X mods who'd help with RMT as well
And what I'm seeing we can get some basis for that claim and see where that goes.
I want to see more.
I want more.
Yes.
Give all of it.
Do you want to know more?
Let me cleanse it.
I need to know.
Yeah, no, that pisses me off, dude.
That's nuts.
Good job to the Ministry of Truth there, by the way.
Nice catch.
This world sucks.
This pisses me off, man.
really wild. The sandbox always returns to Eve. Yeah, but you don't expect a game director
to be a part of it. You know, yeah, that was January of 2025, man. That was January, 2025
when that happened. That's right when the game was at peak good. And he was doing that.
This was right after the first, the first phase. This was the start of phase two. This
was the phaser, we were not on the same server as Polo.
They were all on the other server.
And we were getting all of these horrible reports
of real toxic behavior.
And we were working with the other groups on our servers
to try and prevent that from being a thing.
And we largely managed for a good month or two.
But like, it was absolute shit show.
I think this was when we were on,
I think we were still on the net and they were on Shull.
Oh, I think when we were on Shull,
they were on Resna and so it's similar.
that's that's insane
I think I'm gonna tweet this
yeah
yeah that smells
yeah
yep yep
that's going to the old feed
What is this, Polar Receiver is the most, that was the most toxic guild in the game.
was constantly known for exploiting, doxing, treating people like shit, doing anything they
could to win anything. Were they the ones who were over on the other server that were deleting
all the towns? Was that them? Yeah. Yeah. That was that group. These are the group who
were they had to have a conversation with the devs after they potentially bullied some
means taking their own life. Yeah, that group. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. That's why I was
like you dog. I have to show that. Yeah, the fallout from this game is gonna be wild. It's insane.
You might also have heard of NBS. Yeah, NBS is the guild that Polar became.
That's right, where the guild that Polar mostly came from.
Yep. That's what they went by in phase, phase one, maybe phase two.
I don't even know what I'm gonna write with this.
I don't I it's just it's just a tweet man like it's it writes itself now just the screenshot like
favoritism and bias inside of a game it's even development
is it I don't I just just yo I think I've got the tweet I think you've got it there you go
That's the tweet. I think that fits. I don't even have to add anyone. I don't
want to say anything. I'm just going to put that up there. I'm just going to say that's it. That's
the whole tweet. I don't need anything else posted. Don't even care. That is, that is
bad shit dude. Wild. That's it.
That's it. Fuck me, man. Like, holy shit.
That pisses me off.
Are you planning a refund steam users? I think if pushed enough, Valve will do it.
Because we've seen it them do it in the past and I think that players deserve that.
will always take the consumers side.
They always will.
You just gotta nudge them.
Put in a support ticket and say what's going on to them.
Don't demand a refund.
Just say, hey man, this is what's going on.
You're gonna get a lot of refunds for this.
Like, is there any chance we can get our money back
because this company ripped us off?
Like do that.
Gabe and we'll provide that valve.
You have to understand Valve's entire platform
relies on you as a consumer supporting them.
And they know that.
So treat him with respect for it and let them know what's going on
You say support text you recommend did you get a successful refund skill
Yeah, be polite about it don't be big
Ballast 76 had that no man sky had that lot of shit had that have you seen the tweet from Margaret. No, what is it?
Margaret's tweet last night. Yeah, it was something you did. You have it was in the business. I
Yeah, you got a link. I
I have billion tabs open, but I know yeah, I've got a billion tabs open, but I'm also like not very happy with her
Like any way man
Let me see this
You're 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 I'm my very best with what was in my power and I ask one last favor you
to please be kind to the developers.
We are people who have families,
who have just lost their jobs,
pouring their hearts out in souls and ashes and creation.
Incredible game services team, your absolute AAA team.
So very nice, very positive.
Yeah, just very nice and positive.
I will tell you that I am not very happy with her
because of the reactions that she had to things like this.
We sent up a report to her of a person
who was claiming that they were part of the community
that swatted my home last year.
And also was claiming that I was sexually abusing
the animals at our ferret rescue.
On top of this, we were reporting up people
that were saying that they wanted to kill
all the LGBT people on the server.
Publicly, in the game, saying this.
Intrepid opted to not ban these people,
but instead supposedly give them warnings.
This was her response to this
and said to be transparent about what happened in our end,
be investigated the reports and the others submitted.
Messages and questions occurred in a very short window,
which is irrelevant.
Roughly a 15 minute span, also irrelevant.
And have all building a handful of posts, also irrelevant.
It's the content of the post that matters.
While some of the language used
was inappropriate and unacceptable,
our current moderation framework does not always move
directly to permanent bans for first time offenses in nature.
In many cases, we issue warnings first
for the expectation that behavior can improve
if it doesn't we escalate.
The idea of wanting to retain that player to rehabilitate them is peak I can fix them and makes no sense and this was her response to this.
That is not to me a very human response.
That is a very corporate robot response.
So as much as this message is nice.
That's not nice.
Holy shit, seven ads, the 25 gifted subs.
You absolute mad lad.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, yes, even directly enabling toxic players is wild
Like super wild
And yeah, I'll straight up I'll straight up throw that under the bus because that was the most
most egregious and disgusting response I have ever seen to a report for that kind of toxicity
in a video game in my life ever.
Yep.
Yep.
I was saddened and was disappointed and undiscussed it.
Yeah, it pissed me off.
I actually announced that to the guild when that happened.
That's why I quit the game.
It's gross, too.
There's no sea going down yet, dad.
We have we have chat logs of Steven supporting the the most toxic guild in the game
Why can't I just have a game? I don't know man. Maybe so displayed. What is it Kenchy? Is that what it is?
Yeah
What does it keep getting worse as time goes on? I don't know man
It's kind of like
Bro, you know what this is like. This is like, oh, I got like a I got like a dot right there
And you kind of poke it and you're like oh, I feel like a pimple, right? Oh, that's weird
And you squeeze it and then like
It just keeps coming out. It just keeps it just keeps going and it just never stops and then it fills the whole room that you're in
That's ashes right now. That's it. Yeah
Yeah, there's you're in a room
filled with pimple bus and
Tomorrow it'll be gone. We won't have to care about it anymore, but today
We get to pop that whole pimple the whole thing
Yep
Snipe mayor, what's up, dude? Thank you the rating party eight. Hope you having a good day. Thanks, man
And you're eating an egg sandwich, not anymore.
Past tense, we're eating an egg sandwich.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Maybe in like seven days.
No, I'm not gonna talk about this after today.
I'm gonna put the video out.
I'm hoping that Shade Lock finishes it today
and I'm gonna put the video out and be done.
Wild.
that is that is insane by then I can't get out of this and put it up on Twitter and I feel
fine about that why does this car have so many clouds in it then that's a that's some else
It's wild. I just having the suspicion of it. I mean, it confirms openly by somebody who was just like, da doesn't care. He never was going to, but like Stephen should have done better. But that guy's been a bad actor since day one. His groups were the worst of the worst. And I cannot. Well, I can believe that. That's the problem. That's the premise. I can believe it.
believe it.
I mean, it's not even really about believing it or not. We
always knew because like polar kept getting people unbanned or
polar just wouldn't get banned in bandwaves or like polar would
do some crazy bullshit. And that would just go through. And
there was even there was even like talk about like maybe polar
has some kind of like blackmail on Steven or some shit because
they just weren't getting moderated out. What does RMT
stand for? Real Money Transaction. Meaning they were
using in-game golden items and selling them for real money
and then getting unbanned for. Yeah, there were more
screenshots? Oh no. Oh no. Oh no dude. Oh no dude. Okay so it gets worse. Just me, Steven
owed me big time. He had me apply to other game studios and use them as a reference.
I could also leak NDA shit to them. I was on the payroll for years. Steven basically
unbending my RMT alts that got banned for selling gold. Give the state of the people
raging right now. It might be smarter to let them cool down a bit.
Oh, that's okay. That's fair. G2G. And this wasn't even epic. NPC
sales power leveling accounts. Oh my God.
Oh, no.
That's a crazy claim, dude.
DA is not the most reliable.
I wouldn't consider them a reliable witness.
I would take Steven's screenshots, you know, the unbanned, like I'm losing from a ban list.
That's undeniable.
That's obviously something Steven has said.
The rest of it can be conjecture, it can be taking out of context, but you know, I just think
that our family is very definitive.
The way that I feel about this one makes the most sense because we know they got unbanned.
We know they did.
And this one makes sense as well.
They were unfriendly to us.
This one, no proof of that shit.
That could just be bullshit.
That could just be like hyping it up, right?
this because they got on band. I know they got on band. I know it's speculation, but any
chances could be why they got shut down. No dude, that's not why they get shut down.
No, not at all. I don't think it's that whatsoever.
What if drama makes them pop off? No, it's dead. It's over dude. There's no popping off,
right? Yeah, the idea that that even corporate espionage has been claimed is insane.
Why would they unband people doing RMT? I don't know, but I'm going to be rude with you. Polar is
the most toxic guild in the game. They have been for a long time. They did all the exploits,
they did a shitload of RMT, they were like really nasty, right? Really nasty to people
did horrible shit, like bad, right? And they just kept either not getting banned or getting
getting mysteriously unbanned later. And that was it.
There are lots of rumors as to why Polar were getting unbanned. I think the most real is
to what I can imagine is there were a large number of Phoenix initiative players inside
of that who had connections to Devs and had, you know, easier FaceTime with them. That
one I could would make the most sense, but we've had everything down to, you know,
rumors of recordings of them on voice comms and stuff, you know, blackmail, et cetera.
So it could be anything. It didn't, you know, the people who know on that one, yeah.
There were a lot, a lot of claims, uh, when it was, and the claims were like actually outrageous
and some of them saying that they were, they had blackmail and Steven or some shit, but
like this is, dude, that's, that's not a guy you want, man, but this, the problem with
this is that it ties in even more with the shitty moderations and give them a warning.
Like what was the thing that I actually said, hold up.
I've got a thing that I said to Margaret as a response to it.
made a series of very, very good points. And it's, yeah.
I made a specific statement about this behavior, because this person like was,
I don't know the full context with it,
but they were apparently involved with somebody who committed suicide with like,
they were like abusing that person or going after that person.
Uh, I don't think it was at this point, the, the,
it was the first of January or the, on January last year,
I don't know that happened. I think that's a place in 2025.
So after January, 2025,
Yeah, I think that was after this.
Yeah, I said it showed me the attached message.
This user directly referenced this, and at the time, promoted and labeled himself as
a user of that.
As explained previously, let's see.
Grab this.
No, it's not that one. Let me find it.
The main problem with this entire situation is that your current policies prevent you from acting until someone ends up dead or commit suicide over harassment.
You have all of the warning signs here. You have the correlative messages sent directly from the user. You know what they're talking about.
And yet you've decided to wait and see to retain this player as a customer.
If you guys want to make an actual lasting MMO, then you need to fix this policy.
People would be banned immediately if it is on any other platform. And I know that because I've been through it.
If you need a refresher on who these people are, here's a link for this, and if you need
a refresher on your own TOS, here's a link to that as well. And then I sent them this on their own TOS.
So that was my response to Margaret from that. Like we had a whole long ass conversation.
And then I quit the game because I was like, this is the worst
like moderation I've ever seen in a game. Yeah, ever. Like it's crazy, dude. Oh,
Oh, ESP waste. God damn it. The crab. That's just sad. It's awful, dude. It's awful.
This pisses me off. Now you know why. Yeah, no, exactly. It's like, I didn't know why they were acting like this before.
And then you find this shit, right? Let's join. What's the game?
Ashes of creation. Unfortunately, like it's done, dude.
Time for an update of the video that isn't even out yet. I don't know, maybe.
Yeah, let's let's do that.
Yep.
Okay, so for those that don't have any context for this,
I put out this tweet.
We just got this as a screen cap from a member of a guild called polar,
which is seen as the most toxic member toxic guild in Ash's creation.
They did a whole bunch of RMT, which is real money transaction,
meaning they're selling in game items for real money.
They constantly did botting.
They constantly did things like exploiting.
They harassed people and in one case had harassed the person to suicide was what the claim is right for that really awful horrific shit
This guy here was one of the worst inside of that guild and he's posted this screenshot of his conversations with Steven
In which he was unbanned by Steven as a as a friendly gesture and that ties back into the earlier part of this where we talked about
about how Ash's aggression, their intrepid,
their plan for moderation is to give people,
give them a warning and then let them back in.
I can rehabilitate them.
You can't fix them.
You can't.
Example.
So that's wild.
And yeah, give them a 30 second chance, dude.
It's fine.
Yeah, exactly.
Completely insane to me.
I can fix it. You can't fix it. You can't fix it
Take a look at void crew. I don't think about this game. That looks neat. I
like space like the machine gun rotation. That was neat
Cool
Count 2024 neat. Yeah, I don't know anything about that game
Space extraction. Weird, right?
Void crew's jump ship, but PVP. OK, that's cool.
Void crew is awesome for player party game.
If they're if they're very similar on down, jump space looks very good.
Steven's going to get sued so hard.
I don't actually know what's going to happen, but this shit is dumb.
Like it's.
It's wildly dumb.
like it really is. It's funny too, because there was a member of our guild and our community
a while back that actually played or cage with Steven back in the day and he hated Steven. He hated
him, right? And this was at the, at the time where we were having a very good time with Ashes.
And the game was going in the right direction. Steven was doing a good job. The rest of the
team was doing a good job, which ironically was in January of 2025. So he probably was just
just hiding it well at that point is really what it looks like.
Great.
But, um, that player had played with Steven in Archeage and he hated Steven
because what Steven's guild did was ruined their server.
They did something with the in-game economics and blew up their server
permanently and then said, I'm going to go make a game that's better than
Archeage.
I'm going to go make one that's not pay to win.
And he was like gloating about it then.
And the dude in our guild did that chip on his shoulder for like
basically a decade and was pissed about it.
Now it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And now it makes sense. Yeah. No, I don't,
I don't know what's going to happen with this dude. Someone's going to get
sued. It's probably going to be a class action. We'll probably never seen
any money. And that'll be that.
Yeah. He just knew first. Exactly. It's cause he had prior experience
about the game under the assumption that he owned it a hundred percent.
And now, and now we get huge favoritism. It wasn't even favoritism.
Favoritism is like one of those toxic communities in the game, dude.
That's like the implication of that is enormous.
Yeah, that is bonkers.
Yeah.
to be honest, we probably should have seen some of this screenshot because this was in
September of last year that we had this one that came up when people wasn't liking the
feedback from the community. I'd have forgotten about this. When the screenshot is so bright,
so let me see if I can find it.
Oh, that is gross.
Yeah. A screenshot of a screenshot, so.
Oh, this did not age well.
I know, right?
I mean, the sources in here was the original source time.
I remember when he posted this.
He put it on Discord.
Yeah.
Hold on.
It's aged like moldy socks.
Dude, it's grim.
Where did no what is this reddit thread is it on that read that's where it's from
trying to find the actual link to the disco post so I'm trying to go back and
find now I just want the discord post that's what I'm gonna find I'm gonna
like I'm just gonna show them this this is so grim oh it's grim I remember what
he posted this I was like Steven you can't say shit like that what's wrong
with you
Stephen Shariff. A lot of armchair development going on in here with the embrace of the Dunning-Kruger Effect boot.
I get people are not happy with their expectations of Phase 3 are not reality.
But we are collecting valuable data and working on fixes for issues while continuing forward development.
Need to trust the process and treat this like the alpha testing it is.
I think that was after, wasn't that after they made the changes to in-game economy?
That was in September when basically the community was up in arms about the racism and harassment
in the game and the fact that like things weren't being dealt with, they weren't seeing
bug fixes, they weren't seeing meaningful progression.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't remember if this was the peasant uprising moment where we had that for-
This was when Steve was like banning people in the Discord for disagreeing with him.
That's weird.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, the economy was doing well, just not the one in the game.
What do you guys think it unbanned cost?
Maybe like $30 less than a new account, surely.
Yeah.
That's wild, man.
That's a...
that's that's wild man that's a I'm not gonna get over that one that one's
permanent I think no that's wild I wonder if employees I wonder I wonder how
much the employees knew if they're finding out now that's gotta be shit
that's gotta be real shit yeah some people must have known I think some
people knew, but they couldn't say anything. You know, this is Eve levels of
corruption. Yes, it is. Yes. And this game didn't even leave Alpha. Imagine
a fully, imagine a fully metastasized ashes of creation, like fully formed.
It's taken up like 95% of your body with just one big cancerous tumor.
That's Eve. It's fully, fully ready, dude.
Grim. Actually, Grim. This is the tier two BPO levels of scum. Yes, it is. At least you
understand. That is some CCP shit. Yeah.
In Eve, if you went too far in one of the global chats, you would be moderated. And
the community would completely be on side with you being moderated against. Like there
were lines, private chats. Sometimes the culture there could be pretty bad. There
There were some pretty bad locations there as there are in any game, but any global chat,
you wouldn't get away with the stuff that you can get away with the ashes.
Yeah, even back in 2008, 2010, like.
Can you run an operation like AOC?
I don't have the resources to do so.
And to be honest with you, there's a lot of technical details in there that I don't
quite understand how to build or how to run things like their server gritting system.
I got no goddamn clue. I don't know how that works.
The best thing that I can give you today, yeah, fair.
The best thing that I can give you that is close is block game.
And that's a social sandbox that I'm building in, in high tail now.
It was in Minecraft and we've got it reporting it over to high tail.
And that's just cause I want a social sandbox to play.
That's not like some grand, you know, replace ashes scheme.
It's something we've had out for like five years.
So I'm just going to keep working on it, you know,
that's the whole idea with that. But that's grim.
What's it called? It's block game. It's an MMO built by Jake and I inside of
Minecraft. And we just did it as like a side project, some fun. We're moving it
over to Hytale because Hytale is just a better tool, man. It's what I've been
working on on stream for the past like 30 days, whatever, since Hytale came out.
Yeah, it's fun. It's a fun game.
In 2021, I told for he couldn't make an MMO inside of Minecraft. He
decided to prove me wrong.
You know, boss me and you lost.
I did. I did.
You lost because I wanted the Minecraft server.
Yeah.
What is this?
Oh my god.
Ugh.
Oh, getting messaged by the developers from a shape protocol.
Yes.
Yeah, that's the one super who sent the tweet across that we sent earlier.
They've got some experience in related areas.
TikTok users are trying to claim that Mika is public domain and there's no such thing as the terms of service. Very cool.
Ah, TikTok.
Is that Hill open source? No.
No, it is not.
Oh
Actually, they want to call appreciate protocol. Let me pop them into the channel real quick. They want to talk about it
That's kind of cool
Sure, we were talking about it. That's good
I'm going to call them and then bring you in, okay.
This will do El Kronos.
I can probably add them to this one.
Too late.
Hello there.
Oh hi.
I am so freaking angry.
I am so frickin angry dude at you know, you're not the only one all the shit that we've been going through
freaking minds we've actually been we've been going through every aspect of it all day today and like
just doing discovery basically this shit goes bad man it goes really bad and like damn I think
that the one thing that I can look at where it's like the it feels like a scam to me is
Is there Kickstarter?
I don't know if you've seen that yet.
Have you seen that part?
Let me let you talk, because I am shaking in anger.
Go ahead.
Tell me what happened.
So if we go to their Kickstarter, they actually have listened to their Kickstarter at the
very bottom.
They have a promise to you.
It says, and finally, in the case that Ashes of Creation does not launch, we promise
to refund the backers in full.
Yeah.
I mean, I've been hearing you, and it is such a garbage move.
And I'll say one thing, I don't want to interrupt you, but I'll just say this has happened to
me before, so I would like to tell you about it in a minute.
But the most important thing here is that you know this because you're on a business.
There's something that we colloquially call burn rate, which we call the cost of business.
So for everyone that's listening, burn rate is a metric that you use in the financial
predictions of any company that has any money, if you have a board you have to have a runway
sometimes or burn rate is a number that tells you how fast you're losing money towards
you get to zero.
So you will always know when you're approaching zero and how long it's going to get you
to get there.
And there's no way, there's nothing that can happen that's going to make that burn
rate explode and you'll go from like three years to zero.
So this means we knew.
They knew.
or something like this happens and you're releasing the game,
I don't know how long, but I've seen you play it here
and there on some streams,
you knew this was happening at least six to nine months before.
There's no way that you have a team that big
and you don't know your burn rate to the cent.
So-
If you guys are wondering who this is,
this is one of the developers on Shade Protocol,
which is one of the games we covered for in December.
And they wanted to come on and talk about stuff.
And I'm super down for it.
And when you're talking about that burn rate,
I'm gonna show you some really awful actually.
This game launched under steam on December 11th, 2025 they canned the company today
Which means they got their first steam payout because the amount of money from the December sales
Goes in to January 26th to January 30th for their first payout. They got the money, dude
So not only did they know far in advance that they were gonna run out of cash
But they grabbed this last one and they're not paying the employees as per the leaks that have come out
So if those leaks are not to be true, that means the employees are not getting paid, which is great.
There are many, many things to this that are freaking scary. Somebody in your chat, your chat
goes way too fast, but they just ask, what is the reasonable burn rate? A reasonable burn rate
should be at the very least 15 months of salary of your people. Because remember, you have the
the salary of your people. Plus, you have to pay their health care. There's a lot of
things that you have to pay. So whenever you are making this decision that you're going
to close your studio, you don't have 15 months anymore, right? Now you might have six, right?
Because you're taking all the money that you kind of pay in it. It's something called
Cobra. Cobra is a – well, I don't want to go into the galleries because I don't
want to talk about anyone's character. That's not my place. I'm not interested
I have my opinions. I think you're factually incompetent if you're in a situation where you are put in such a thing and you're lying.
So I don't want to talk about individuals because I don't have any say, but I could tell you, running a business, you cannot possibly not have an amount of knowledge of how your operation runs and how much it costs
costs so that you could say if something like this has to happen and I have to make a choice,
I have to make sure that people are paid for. I have to also think about the reputational damage,
I have to think about marketing, I have to think about crisis control, I have to think
there's so many things I have to think and there's something I'm sure you have to say Thor
is called succession planning. If a truck runs you over today, there is a plan in some way that
It says who's going to take over, what's going to happen, how are people going to get paid.
That's not the point I'm saying someone's going to get run over.
But if you have a succession plan, that also means you had a plan for things to be diverted
to someone else other than you to run the company if you're not here.
That requires you to have a knowledge of your burn rate.
That requires you to know exactly how long you have and when you have to trigger
Let's say in a case of you're unhealthy or somebody else to do it
There's so many things that and you're right in them and you know, this is great
I'm looking at the stream. It's it's a lot of people don't realize these dude
They don't they don't think about you have payroll you have payroll taxes
The state wants their cut the federal wants their cut
You have tax on all the money you actually make and anything you keep that you can't actually expense out
You got benefits for every one of the employees you got hardware costs
You got software costs you got rental costs if you're going to do that
You've got stuff like travel and everything that goes on to that as well
You have everything that goes along all of this. This is your burn and you have to determine
Hey, do we have enough money to do this thing six months from now?
Do we have enough money to go and show our game off at this convention or anything like that?
Advertising costs everything goes into this marketing goes into here all of it your entire cost is
Put into the burn rate, but then on top of this. It's not just that
It's also the cost entirely of all of the little things that go outside of this as well
So like if it's marketing, it's not just marketing.
It's broken out.
And it's like the physical marketing, the online marketing,
the what about the staff in marketing?
And you create teams for this
and you have a budget for every one of your teams.
I know how much our business costs down to the day.
You have to.
Down to the day.
I know the number of days that we can survive
if I start making zero dollars right now
and how long I can keep all of these people employed
and what benefits they can get to the minute, dude,
because you have to, because if you don't...
The chat makes the point that...
Simon said that they've got two years,
of course, if Simon's very clearly talking about that's two years,
they know they can survive their burn, right?
That's the principle.
It's, you know, we see every day
inside of the game development space.
Exactly. And it's not a chronos to your point.
That's a good point.
Like, someone like Simon,
and I followed a little bit of that story,
he could tell, like, I have...
I can put this much money,
which means this many people for this long, right?
He doesn't have, I mean, I don't know him,
I don't know anything, but I imagine he did that
with a cell sheet, just saying, you know,
there's many people times this amount.
It's math that doesn't require a finance person.
You have a team that's massive.
People are professionals from AAA.
I mean, that's a, I will call that a problem,
but one thing I will tell you,
I do not want to get in FOIA,
I don't want to get into legalities,
but I just want to say something that's important
for people to know.
In the United States, when you cross the end of the year,
you might not have a fiscal year.
There's a difference between the fiscal year of a company,
which is when they decide to report there.
I could see you smiling, I don't wanna go into it.
I don't wanna go into what I'm implying.
But the important thing is once you cross
the December 31st line,
that means that you go into the next year
before the end of the month, literally tomorrow,
I'm saying this with knowledge.
Tomorrow, the second is when the 1099s are owed,
and that's the type of document that you
have to give to people in the United States
if they work as contractors.
And we delivered that last month.
That's owed tomorrow, right?
Whenever you make decisions this big,
you have to have already done all of this.
Like, you knew exactly how this all was going to play out.
months in it best because there are things that result in fines that unless you don't know that
those things are coming and you're willing to take those hits, right? There's just too much,
too much that I think it's out there. But I'll tell you real quick and I don't want to take
too much of your time. This makes me incredibly angry. No, you're good. A lot of people are
asking who this is. This is Kendall Developer Shade Protocol. It's a game that we actually
covered for Indie in December, but they have a lot of understanding of business. Just say,
I have a lot of understanding for business, for this area. And the reason why I have this knowledge is because I run a business. I'm a CEO, right?
I'm the CEO of an S corporation, which is pirate software, which is how I employed all of the people that you see like the batteries and like that.
And I provide them benefits. They get medical, medical vision, dental and life insurance and therapy on a $50 copay.
And I have to manage all of those finances. And I have to understand everything that's going on.
I have a group that handles like all the financing stuff for the business,
But I have to know what's going on so I can make business decisions around what we're trying to do in terms of what we're burning cash
On to make sure that we can do those things and that comes down to things like for the moderators getting the new computers
Or handling when someone's having it like it off fifty dollar what copay meaning
They can go to a therapist and only cost them fifty bucks maximum. So the whole point
We I got them to be clear
I got them the same medical coverage that I have as the CEO
I got them the best possible medical coverage that could be gotten for that because that is deeply important
to me because when I worked in AAA, I was treated like shit and I got nothing and I
didn't want that to be a working environment for others. It was important to me.
Incredibly so. Zafroth, yeah, thank you. That's very nice of you. But like, to be
real with you, dude, like that, you have to know a full understanding of your
entire financial everything. You have to also, like, I'll give you an example
of one of the things that I do. If my pay was going to decrease, like our
income as a business decreased by 70% today, how long do we survive? You
You have to run numbers like that and understand exactly what's going to happen with your business
so that you can make sure that you're not overextending.
You don't want to grow to the size of the fishbowl.
You don't want to do that.
You want to stay lean and you want to make sure you're doing things efficiently.
And one of the things that I saw throughout Ashes of Creation is they didn't do that.
They ballooned up to 250 developers in size, 250 employees.
They were burning $800,000 a week allegedly based on what Steven said.
And what did they show for it?
down development time, less development than you would get with a small focus team for dramatically
more money. And that's why it's insane to me that something like that could happen with some
I don't want to get personal but my thought here is this is impossible to not see coming
in terms of so let me ask you a question. Let me turn it this way. You said you buy for
example computers for some of this is an example where let's say you get a computer
for some of your mods, right?
Yeah.
As you know, this I'm not getting technical,
but I think it's valuable, you know,
layman's information for everyone.
So if Thor buys a computer for their mods,
he can expense that computer up to a certain amount.
But you know, when does he get to claim that?
After December 31st.
Yes, I do.
And depending on if it's hardware,
it also breaks it up into multiple sub-payments
based on the diminishing something
of the actual item itself, text manuals that.
I know about it.
I know we don't get it all at once.
Of course, and there are so many benefits of,
if you know that things are happening,
you can plan them, right?
But whenever there's a board,
I'll tell you real quick my story,
like, oh, let me tell people,
because I see a lot of that question.
So I'm Kando, I was here in in December,
I came here with like 60 something thousand wish list,
I'm at 90, you guys are insane.
So thank you so much, like you guys, you guys are, you know, saved our, well, not saved
by game, but propelled our game.
So I mean, I owe you guys a lot.
So thank you so much for everything you've done for us.
We came here, what, 400, which, uh, um, what is it, uh, Kickstarter people, uh,
signups were at 1800.
So you guys really change our lives.
So I really appreciate it.
But I came here with a story that I come from, you know, um, I'm ex-military
cartologist, then from there I've worked in Fortune 100 companies most of my life.
I've changed industry every two to three years. I'm a product guy from Fortune 30
companies and up. I've seen this happen many times, but my first job that wasn't
the military was a company that I built that was an education nonprofit. I ran
it for four years was my child. It was the thing that I've loved the most
other than shape protocol. Four years and it was a nonprofit and in order
for it to accept grants, I needed to have a board. I founded the board January, I will
say dates, January of a certain year. The first meeting of the board was February 24th.
That day I got kicked out of the company in order and they wanted to take all the IP
of the company and convert it into a private company to sell it. Whenever you get a board,
The board doesn't have any of your interest.
Their interest and your interest can never be aligned unless you plan this legally, right?
So you can create a board with legal precedent and say, you cannot do this, you cannot do
that, you cannot do this, you cannot do that.
You can do all of that.
The only way that doesn't happen is if you set things up in such a way that the
board is there to comply with you.
So they could choose not to.
What I'm coming from is that it's very, very dangerous to create a board because a board
is not the operation.
So you have a CEO, Thor is a CEO, right?
If Thor has a board, there's a board of directors and then there's someone there that might
be like the chair of the board.
The chair of the board and the CEO are not the same people.
I got to cut you off first.
I got something bad.
So this is actually a filing of them and you can see here are the corporate officers
that we actually have here and you can see Steve Sherif and John Moore who are the Chief
Executive Officer and the Secretary and the Chief Financial Officer.
Here's the Board of Directors.
They weren't board of directors.
They weren't directors on the board.
They were some kind of an executive board or some other thing that was not listed
on the business.
Shareholder board potentially.
Shareholder board or an executive board in some way.
So not ones that could directly take control of the business, not ones that directly
had power to do so, ones that they allowed to do so.
Well, what happens when you have two people, if you go up a little bit, you'll
see here that these people have three different roles, right?
In most states, you are mandated to have three roles in order to be
able to have uneven votes.
Um, whenever you have one person that controls the majority of the votes,
that is not unlawful.
That isn't, there's nothing wrong with that, of course.
Uh, and that's most of the time intentional, it happens, but, but
But normally when you have companies this big, you would have three different people
with three different backgrounds.
Most of the time, one of them will not even belong to the industry to give some sense of
a breath and understanding of what's going on in the world.
And you would almost never want to have all the power to yourself in terms of decision
power and approval.
But if you're saying that this is what I know from the game, I don't follow it
enough because it's just not my type of game. But I do remember seeing that he said many
times when I saw an interview what I said like this guy gives me some weird feeling in my
heart where he said, I am beholden to nobody. I am like, you know, I'm never going to have
a board. I don't have stakeholders out of that. That's what I say. You know, that's
what I'm trying to do a freaking kickstart.
So Sam, should I do it?
Yeah.
Because I don't want to do, I don't want to, I might have to, I'm not going
If I do, I'm going to come out to the world and say, hey, this happened, right?
If I talk that much shit at some point, can I swear here?
Yes, yes.
You're good.
Okay.
If I talk this much, Mac, at some point, I need to come out and say, hey, you know
what?
I got a publisher, guys.
Like, I had to, right?
These are mine.
I had to do this.
I didn't have a choice, right?
Not apologetically, but say it, right?
So if you're going to get investment or you're going to get a board and you've
been talking a trillion years about how this is not what you want to do and how
much you hate them. You are the most fucking triple A guy in the freaking world.
You're leaving people, 270 people stranded because you couldn't manage
your company that should run itself. It's the only thing out there that is
somewhat even close to being able to compete. I wouldn't say beat,
but at least be anywhere near the MMOs are out there that could demolish
you in a fraction of a second. When you have a community this big that adores you and love
you, and you idolize yourself so fucking much that you can't look at a statement that tells
you six months out, you're about to leave these people stranded. Whoever this guy
is here in your in your in the in the document that you're showing behind says chief financial
officer, you know how much that pays. Yeah. And just glass door. So that means all
that money you're paid that you could have just paid to one tax accountant that
could have done this for $200 a year and give you a burn rate.
So H&R Block can do that for you.
Fuck off.
It's your fault.
You mismanaged your company.
You mismanaged your company.
And you could have done anything.
So at this point, you get $3 million
at a Kickstarter.
And you set this up.
Even if you, I mean, I'm not talking about Steven
individually.
I'm more talking about the management ideology
of a company this big.
You got what, $3 million in Kickstarter?
You know what GameCut got made for that?
Blasphemous.
Tell me if you can make a game or get a Blasphemous.
You know, I'm gonna stop.
Go ahead, Thor.
So I think the thing that really gets me about this
is as players we actually never knew
there was any kind of a board that didn't exist.
The thing is exactly what you're saying,
they advertise it as Stephen is in full control.
Stephen's the one who bankrolled the entire thing.
There was no other debtors.
There was no other loans.
There was nothing, it was just Steven, he's rich.
He did it all.
And because of that, there's no board of directors
and there's no one that he has to answer to.
The only time we have ever heard that there's a board
is in this message of him saying the game is dead.
This is it.
This is the first time we ever heard this
and that was today.
So with that in mind, I reached out to a number
of the other employees that were there
and some of them responded to me.
And one of them stated that this board
manifested six months ago.
And it's not listed in any of their documentation,
which means it's not an official like part of the company,
like board of directors board, it's something else
or they're just not listing it for whatever reason.
And then on top of that, the employees said that
everything went downhill from the moment
that that board was implemented.
And now-
To my knowledge for, in all states that I know of,
this is just my knowledge.
I might be wrong here.
I don't want to me speak either
because I don't want to get sued for emotional idiot.
But I will say this, I don't know a state.
To my knowledge, that doesn't make the board of directors
of any company that is tax reporting public.
I don't know a state that doesn't do that.
That's why when I saw this, I was like, what's going on?
Yeah, this is the reason why I saw this.
And I was like, they don't have a board of directors.
What board is he talking about?
And one thing that I saw on your stream here earlier,
when I was here, seething in anger,
that whenever we mentioned Dunning Kruger
to your freaking community,
Let me just get this straight in case people don't know what that is.
The Inkruger is a type of behavior, this is something that is very, very complicated
to say to people versus very disrespectful.
You know when you go, you see the people that go to American Idol and they sing so
freaking bad, but they think that they are incredible.
They think that they're just as good as Beyonce or anyone else.
That's the Inkruger.
so little ability that you don't have enough ability to know that you're bad at something.
That's what's required for you to drop this ball, for you to suck this bat.
To run a company like this to the ground requires that kind of absurd mindset to not be able
to at least care for the fact that this is going to happen, right?
That this is something that can happen.
It's something that if you have the bare minimum administrative strength in your team,
going to come to you. Now, I'll say this in defense of the company for and this is maybe
maybe we'll disagree here. Stephen or anyone, no one else. This is my, there's not my opinion.
I think this is this is probably factual. They don't have any responsibility to tell us that
they made a board. They don't have to. I don't think they have to when you exactly. But if
four goes right now and he goes and let's say four decides to end his you know his
ferret rescue right and you're still getting donations don't you think you should have told us
yeah exactly exactly because you don't have to because you could as a moral imperative
yeah exactly yeah you put out a mess with this community on whom you rely it's it's not
just about being open to the community who are trusting you exactly yes you put yourself
in the fucking box. This was your choice. And that's why I mean, I think I admire the devs that do
that, that go out and say, we will not use AI. You are choosing this. You are saying this. So therefore,
you're putting yourself in a box where you have to own up to that. So you can't show up and say,
oh, this is not in my hands. And you say, no, I put this board here. And I felt to tell you
because I thought I could, you know, this was going to be a good thing for us. And I didn't
work out that's commendable that's respectable you made a mistake life goes on exactly if you
look at this all he said here is uh i lost control to the board by it's like dude the whole time
tons of us were buying into this game specifically because we knew that there was no board that there
was no investors that there was no oversight for that and it was actually but it was its vision
yeah we really was privately driven because that was the whole point it would be the game for
the players by the players kind of thing and being funded by everyone kind of pre-ordering
kick-starting and by Steven's funding was kind of the whole story I think we were so as far as I
understand it. And then suddenly it was uh there was a board and they took it away from me by...
Well let me ask you this honestly let me ask you this honestly I mean I'll ask I'll ask
Chronos because I think you have experience in this Thor but Chronos if this happened to you
right and it was an honest uh I mean boards like I said boards are mischievous they're
They're not your friends, they're there to operate the business at the highest capacity
of the economic strength they can.
They're not here to make your life easy unless they're built to do that.
If they're here as investors, they're here to make money.
So I'll ask you this, Chronos.
If this happened to you and it was an honest, you made a big mistake, do you run or do
you say, I'm going to stay?
Take away my entire salary, whatever it is, give it to the people.
my shares do whatever you need to do in order to make sure that people get paid one more month
and at least in 30 to 60 fucking days people can get cobra people can go out and find a job
and people can don't have to go through what they're going through right now because that's the
bare minimum that you do whenever you're saying I have responsibility on this this happened on my
watch and the military is like my watch I can't imagine myself on a board in this position
because I don't believe there is a way that this can happen by mistake. If you put a board
in a position where they can have a legal power over you to actually oblige you,
you are, you've lost control of it. At that point, you no longer have charge of the company. You
are no longer really the CEO. You're no longer the owner. They own it because the board will
always and must by the nature of being on the board, they act as the brain for the company,
which is an individual under law. That's how that works. They are not there for you or
for the feelings. They are there to do what's best for the company.
Yeah, and one of the things I was going up is specifically was like, yeah, one of the
things I was going up with, with having a board or having investors or having a publisher
is that you have lost control of your game.
You've lost control of it.
It's over.
Right.
And the reason why I say that is because someone else can steer the ship now.
Not you as the developer, not you as the idea have or not you as the person who's
actually doing implementation.
Another third party has the ability to walk up to your ship and pilot it away and
you have no control.
If you are not in full control of that ship, it's over.
That's just how it goes.
And the only time you can have a situation like that
is if you have a partner that actually understands
that the best way to succeed and get a return
on their investment is by letting you cook.
And that is very rare.
That is incredibly rare.
So with this, the reason why so many of us bought into it,
the reason why we liked this game and we're into it
is because we were served that narrative of
he's steering his own ship.
there's no one there to take it away.
There's no one there to drive it into the rocks.
And then suddenly there's a board.
I mean, I don't understand.
You know, like, it's...
Go ahead, sorry. Go ahead.
This is why I don't fundamentally believe that
any lawsuit based on the whole, on the kickstart,
you know, launch thing, I don't think goes anywhere.
But if they're gonna,
the people will look at this and consider misselling.
If you are missold something on the basis
that it was independently being run
and it was being run by Stephen and by our backing,
and you did it on that basis.
That's, you're getting close to miss selling territory.
If there was stuff going on behind the scenes,
we didn't know about like venture capital investment,
like a board that could compel them.
Well, that's not what we were being told.
And that's not what they published.
And that's not, that's what I'd be more looking at.
If I was really wanting to start any kind of lawsuit,
that's what I'd be looking to start with.
I'll go, wait, I'll go one step beyond that.
I'll go one step beyond that.
I feel misled as a consumer.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
Let's say this is not intentional.
Let's say it wasn't intentional,
I displayed out this way, right?
Still, you were misled, right?
Like, if you and I have a conversation
and I tell you I'm gonna be at your event at seven o'clock
and I don't make it at seven o'clock
and you were depending on me to be there at seven o'clock,
it could have been because I drove late
or because there was an accident
that didn't let me get there.
I was still late and you were still
in the belief that I was gonna be there
and you were counting on me, right?
So there's damages that come intention or not, right?
The law doesn't care about your intentions, it cares about the result.
But my suggestion, and I'm saying this as a developer, I am so fucking embarrassed.
It is so insanely embarrassing for this to happen on a studio that calls itself indie.
So I am at a loss for words for you guys, the consumers, but I will tell you this.
You win with your wallet every freaking time.
I'm not inciting you to do anything because I don't have the power to do that, but
But if I was in the situation that I bought something like that, I would go to Steam and
I would tell them respectfully, kindly, with dignity, don't go fight, you know, don't go
and, you know, insult somebody there and customer support, you know, but go and ask
for your money back.
That's exactly what I told him earlier.
You might say, well, you know, legally, we don't get it back.
Don't, I tell this to everybody, even in my team, don't worry about the quest
after this one.
Don't worry about the question you're dealing with right now.
Right now you've got to go get seven boars and kill them and bring them.
That's what you need to do.
Do that now.
Don't worry about the future.
You go and tell Steve that you want your money back if that's what you decide to do.
And let's see what happens.
But let me tell you, there's 100,000 of you.
It doesn't matter.
It's almost going to do something about it, or at least there will be learning
and those learnings will prevent these things from happening again.
But it's a little bit less about the why and all that stuff, and it's more about this is
happening nonstop.
And it's something that it was preventable.
There's no way that you burn through all this money that's quickly, unless you want
to be AAA, and by consequence, you die, right, because it's just you can't do that.
But the last thing I would say here, the way that I, and once again, I keep saying,
I don't want to talk personally, but this is what I would have done in the situation.
I would have done the following.
I would have made a board because the board is required for you to get investment most
of the time.
That's a fair thing to ask whenever you're going to get investment.
If you're trying to get investment, which they told us that they weren't.
They weren't.
But let's say, you know, there was some exemption source.
I don't know, whatever they were going to do that they needed a board.
Let's say, boards are not bad.
They're just, they need to be managed.
So what I would have done is I would have put myself, Thor, probably you would
have done this.
yourself as chairman of the board, as in you run the board, because even though you don't
have the experience to run a board, you sit there and then you hire people that know what
they're doing and then you have enough boats to control it.
And then you hire an experienced game director, make them CEO of the organization.
They're beholden to you, right?
So you control their salary, you can replace them whenever you want to, but you're
at the board side. The board side doesn't have to have the competence to run the studio.
They have to have the competence to keep it afloat. So what I would say is I would have
the humility to accept that maybe I'm not the best at the operation and I would have
boost myself to the board and then I would have hired a professional to crush it and
then make the game as best as it can and it would have cost me whatever it would
cost me, right? That's what I would have done. You ready for
nightmare? Oh, man. I'm getting so excited. Go ahead. So we
have this website was California Secretary of State
bizfoilonline.sos.ca.gov. And it lists all of the debtors for
actions of creation. And it has things like notice of state
tax lien, you got UCC in here. Like all of this is listed
out, we can see all of it. Suddenly, on January 14 of
this year. It went to a Karen Elboriego. If we go look up Karen Elboriego, something
horrific comes up. Let's go pull up the Wikipedia page. You know it's bad when it's Wikipedia.
I saw this earlier. I was here. I looked into this one. Yeah. It's bad. It's real
bad. Let me pull this up. Here in old Vema. Here we go. So this is Vema. Vema was a privately
held multi-level marketing company that sold dietary supplements. The company was shut down
in 2015 by the FTC for engaging in deceptive practices and being a pyramid scheme. The
company based in Tempe, Arizona was founded in 2004 by Benson K. Lauren and Karen Borreco.
go. Wait, brother and sister.
Huh? Huh?
Huh?
So I mean, if that's you, if that's the same person, your
mods, don't, don't you do a background checks?
Yes.
I'm sure you do background.
Yes, we do.
If you're going to hire Cronos and he's going to be your
lead mod, you probably don't want to hire him if he's
run another channel to the ground, right?
Oh, yeah.
Maybe you don't want to give him the entire fees to the kingdom, right?
This is most different, right?
You can trust me.
Yeah.
So what happens in things like this?
Once again, I'm not saying any facts.
I don't want to get in trouble, but I'm just saying something that's valuable is,
whenever things like this happen, most of the time you're selling debt,
is the term that we call, which is there is some sort of way in which there is a movement of risk
from the studio elsewhere.
And that movement assures the studio that they don't carry the debt, but they have to return
an amount in exchange for that debt.
This is the same as getting a big loan.
I'm not sure if that's what happened here.
I have no way of knowing that's what happened.
But the only way that moves like this is that there's some sort of movement of risk
that goes away from the studio.
So I don't know if the studio was the holder of all the debt, but that doesn't matter
if you can't afford, if you're using the money of the studio to pay the debt, it doesn't
matter if you hold it or don't, right?
You're just moving the risk elsewhere.
But in the end, your people are not getting paid, which, I mean, it's bad anyway.
But I guess what I, the only thing I would say is I wouldn't have left.
I know that there's more implications to that, and there's, you know, I don't
know, he said in the message that there are ethical things that were happening that he
can't agree with on banning this DA guy sounds like a very unethical thing to do.
A little bit, but it seems pretty unethical to me. Yeah, especially because that dude
is accused of going on from there and harassing a player until they killed themselves.
Calling him in his organization tied to him. Yeah, I'd say if I'd seen that screen
I would have come back to ashes at any point.
If I had ever seen that, I would have quit that because we know who Polar is.
If you tell your community, people that are taking, I mean, I know this sounds like Kumbaya,
but I really mean it, and I don't mean it as a promo thing, but this job is a fucking privilege.
You know how many people are doing jobs that they hate? We get to make dreams for people.
You have to think that seriously.
If you're going to tell people, oh, you're what?
What's that?
Armchair dev or whatever?
This is your first fucking game.
What do you know of dev?
What you got in like, you know, dev for dummy,
shut the fuck up.
Like it's inevitable that people
are going to want to be part of the dev cycle.
If you're involving them in your freaking discord
and you're telling them that you're doing this
as your first game or not, they're
going to want to be part of it.
Go make Call of Duty 72.
if you want to make something as a formula,
you're making something magical.
So of course people are going to be part of it.
So talking to people, talking down to your community
is the worst sin you could do.
Oh yeah.
The worst sin you could do.
So the moment that you do that,
and people are sticking to you, that's crazy.
Like if that's how much trust they had
that you were somehow doing the right thing,
I just can't stand that.
So yeah, I know it sounds like passionate beyond,
like sense, I'm just kind of like overly excited. But the truth is, this has true economic consequences,
whenever you treat your people in a certain way that affects their trust in you, then
you can say, this is the Oreo experiment, if you haven't heard that, I'll tell you
some of the day, but you if you have a door and people are coming into this room, right,
and they're coming at a certain rate, and you want them to come through the door
and then say out of every 10 people, seven people come in and eventually six and it's
actually five. So what do you do? You post a person and every time they go by,
you offer them an Oreo if they go in.
So now instead of five people, eight come in, right,
into the room.
So what happens is at some point after, let's say, a year,
you are not able to take the Oreo away
because you don't know if that will send you down to five
or to two, right?
You don't know the negative effect
that you have of a system that you've implemented.
That has to also do with trust.
Whenever you tell people, I am this kind of like,
I don't know,
hallier than thou person, this is like who I am
and you should trust me.
In the end, you can't take that away.
The moment you start moving away,
that has literal economic consequences.
So the downfall of this,
the fact that you might have needed a board,
the fact that you might have need more money,
I don't know, I have no evidence.
I am just saying that if there were circumstances
that led there, it could have been
because there's a trust issue,
because you might be mistreating your community
or looking at them as a marketing thing
or a source of adoration.
Whatever all that is, is the incorrect way
to build a game and that's really required
to build something big.
Get out of the kitchen,
hire someone that can run the show and pay them well
and they would have hired third of the people
that you hired and it would have worked.
Maybe not at the tail that we wanted but.
I have the final nightmare.
The final nightmare.
I'm not, what is it?
So I had to go down with the UCC filing.
I wanted to go down with the UCC filing
and see exactly what was indebted to Carinelle Borreco.
Oh, yeah, this is a wild list.
Intrepid Studios Inc. and Stephen Sharif are the debtors.
The secured party name is Carinelle Borreco,
meaning they own this now.
All assets of the debtor, whether or not...
Oh, we're gonna add, Scott, dammit.
We're gonna wait until the ads.
We're gonna wait until the ads.
Oh, you're making me feel like every minute of the day.
Wait, wait, wait.
assets been described on screen and got really excited. So, uh, you know, he's clearly interested
in these, just wants the assets. He wants to liquidate. He's so excited.
You have to stop me if I'm crashing too much.
No, you're good. You're good. I don't want to,
your passion is palpable. And that's a good thing, man. You care. I care. And like,
I've been, dude, I've been bitching about this for 10 hours straight.
Yeah, I think you're crashing here.
We're upset. Don't worry.
Did you see that the studio from, which this is old news,
but the studio from Mighty No. 9 closed a couple days ago.
So that is yet another, like, we want to be AAA situations.
You don't need to be AAA. Just be a fucking indie.
Like but they want they you know what they want for I'll say this like truly what they want is an office
The one an office that they can put their little logo in to feel like they're like, you know, Google
You don't need it. You don't need it. It's the same thing dude
It's the same thing as streamers that are like I need a sponsor why so it can be a real streamer
No, you don't
Like shut up. You just just go live man. Like it's it's the same shit
I need a publisher. Why? Because I'm not a real game dev without one. I hear that shit all the time,
all the time. You don't need the slick parking space. You don't need an office with your logo on it.
You don't need any of that shit. Okay, ads are over. I have to show this now. I'm going to explain.
I finally figured out about the UCC thing. I've never gotten it into investment in business.
I don't know anything about that side of the world because I intentionally stay away from it.
My corporation that I own the MCO of I am an S corporation,
meaning that it's a pastor corp.
So I don't have any investors who never can.
They sit in a little box that goes to the bank in a vault and that's where the
shares live and they will never be touched by any of their human being.
With that in mind, I open up the UCC filing as of January 14th in
trepid studios and Stephen Shariff are now no longer in control of the
company. So this was half a month ago.
It is now owned by Karen L. Borriaco.
In this, the description of what is indebted is all assets of the debtor, whether now owned
or hereafter acquired and wherever located, including without limitation, all tangible
and intangible personal property, including all inventory, equipment, servers, computers,
hardware, software, source code, object code, development tools, databases, digital
assets, content libraries, websites, domain names, user accounts, application data,
documentation and all other technology used in or related to any online games or platforms
operated or developed by the debtor. Everything. This includes without limitation, all intellectual
property, including all copy rates, registered or unregistered, trademarks, trade names,
service marks, trade dress, logos, designs, patents, trade secrets, know how it's the
The whole enchilada, dude, this person, it's Karen Elboriego.
If we go and pull this person up, Karen Elboriego, the scam artist, literally, pulling this up
is the new owner of Ashes of Creation, one of the creators of Vemma, which was a nutrition
company that was privately held multi-level marketing company that sold dietary supplements.
The company was shut down in 2015 by the FTC for engaging in deceptive practices and being
a pyramid scheme by the FTC.
They closed that directly was the one who was individually sanctioned by them by name.
Like it.
So she's right up close to this one like that's like she was the founder of it was literally
like, I guess what we've learned is that a Karen has destroyed ashes of creation.
I'll tell you this just to protect you, and this is not going to happen because I think
this document is pretty clear, but just in case, the document that you're showing here,
sometimes this document, what they do is they have pretty comprehensive language, and then
they have an addendum, or some in some language here might say, oh, you know, and if they
have an addendum, they might, in the addendum, they might say, well, it includes all
of that.
However, it doesn't include like this, that and the other.
So sometimes, you know, these things can sound pretty drastic and for the naked eye might
seem too much, but I'm not saying it is.
Oh, no, I'm just showing the whole thing.
There's none.
They just own it.
Okay.
Well, there you go.
Yeah.
It just goes all the way to the bottom and it says, Indicated Clatter is held in trust.
Not applicable.
Alternate financing statement.
Not applicable.
Select an additional alternate financing statement type.
Not applicable.
And it's just, that's it.
The security interest covers all accessions, attachments, accessories.
It's literally the full enchilada, everything.
At the very least, why did we not hear on the 14th?
And if this was going to happen, this doesn't just happen overnight, there's going to have
been at least some groundwork laid for this to have all worked out.
So what the hell's been going on and why haven't we been told?
Why was it put on steam?
Why have they told us this is the day after the payout?
I think the real question that I have is, like, if we go back over to his post here,
right?
Steven have an ethical dilemma that caused him to sign away all of the intellectual property
to a person that has run multi-level marketing scams in the past and was shut down by the
FTC.
What possible ethical conundrum would lead a man to do such a thing?
I mean, that's the question.
I have some assumptions that I think are close to 80% correct in my brain, but I'm
I'm not going to do that because I feel you're going to get it.
I could make a lot of statements, but I won't.
We shouldn't.
I really shouldn't because let me say this.
I'm just going to ask the question and leave it there because I'm pretty sure we know the
answer.
We asked the question.
Yeah.
But to people probably in the chat that have some experience with some of this stuff,
it's not impossible to have a guess of some of the limitations here.
But more than anything, the important part of it is that if you have someone that
that took all the debt from a company.
But I don't know where you don't have money to pay your next month.
You think that person that took all the debt doesn't know this is happening.
So that means this is, what is it called in English, like a controlled burn when you
kind of know you're burning the crops this way and then you want to build something
out of it?
You might not be planting the same thing, but you're saying, well, that's what
it seems like, and I think that's not a fair thing to assume, right?
And we're not making, we're not saying that's what happened, we're saying, from the naked
eye on the outside, that's what it looks like, and I think that's not a fair thing to say.
The problem to me, at least to me, is you're letting go of incredible talent out of sheer
mismanagement.
There's no way around that.
Now, you can come and say all the things that happened that, you know, are the
circumstances, right?
of why didn't make it to the party at seven o'clock,
but you were still late.
And that is mismanagement.
And that's why maybe, just maybe,
six months ago when this happened,
by the way, I've been in huge companies that do mergers.
You know what happens during merger store?
People talk to the employees
and they tell them this merger's gonna happen.
By the way, this is a good moment
if you're considering like another opportunity
or you're like to move roles or whatnot.
This is what happens in ethical processes.
Whenever there is something that is
not disruptive to a business, like enacting a board
or selling your entire debt or losing control of your agency,
that's when you go to your employees and you tell them,
A, it's not like you don't tell them things are bad.
That doesn't make any sense because that's not what,
hopefully not what you think is going to happen, right?
But what you normally do is say to the employees,
A, these circumstances are happening.
And the idea here is, if you would like to start searching for other roles because this uncertainty is not something that you're interested in,
then this is the moment that here's the processes to help you do that.
If not, if you want to stick around, there's going to be some rough months ahead where we're going to have to do some learning together,
and people might have to take different roles.
That's what normally happens.
That's what normally would happen.
So I'm just kind of letting you guys know that, you know,
companies that are what these guys are all trying to emulate because they all want to be,
you know, act like they're AAAs. That's how it's handled there. It's people are treated with
with high level of dignity and they're told about these things in advance. First to prevent the
chaos that's happening right now. And second, because we actually care about them. And if,
and there are people that might say, you know what, I can't deal with the uncertainty of like,
you know, you guys are doing all these movements and things are going to change
I would rather go somewhere else and have a stable job.
Great, go do that.
That's healthy for the business.
So if that didn't happen or, I mean, you said that somebody knew that this happened six months ago,
but telling people, hey, you know, we put a board like a celebration,
it's not the same as telling them, hey, there's going to be consequences to this
and we need to prepare or whatnot.
So anyway, very scary from a management perspective to see this.
totally from my mind preventable, no matter what the circumstances are.
Also, someone's saying that they filed this prior to like months ago, prior to that, they did not.
This was filed on January 14th, as you can see, the filing date and the execution date, the lab
state on that is all January 14th. There was nothing in there that displays it as prior to
that. However, if we go down through the UCC list, and we actually see the rest of this,
you'll see that there's actually a number of active UCCs here. It's not just the one. And
of these active ones. I just pulled in another one for the Yaya Legacy Trust. That was filed on,
what is that? August? Is that August? Is August 8th? Is that August? I think it's August.
August 1st, 2025. And it lapses on August 1st, 2030. Right? The Yaya one is active right there.
You can see it there. And then it goes up to Yaya Legacy Lapsed here. And that's a different
one for that. So we have to go through each and every one of these, because if you look
at this one. This is Yaya Legacy Trust, Jason Carminus, Yaya Holdings, LLC, and what does it give? The IP again.
Wait. So that gets really interesting. And if you look at some of these, if we look here,
you've got another one. So this is Intrepid Studios, Inc. with a dot. You've got Intrepid
Intrepid Studios, Inc. with no dot, no comma. There was an LLC at one point. This one's
since Intrepid Studios ashes of creation.
So that's a separate one as well.
And you have to kind of like figure out
which one of these are actually active,
what rights are being handed over
and are they being shared rights
between all the different UCC findings.
I don't know.
A lawyer has to unravel this
or a person who knows this very well.
This is not my area of expertise.
Yeah.
In any case, if we go and look at this,
so we do Jason Caramitas.
I don't know who that is.
Hera Manis.
Kara Manis?
Kara Manis.
Let's see. Who is this? I have no idea who this is.
This is the kind of stuff that you tell your community. That's my opinion.
I agree.
I know.
No, I disagree.
Like, I don't know, a company like, I don't know, like EA doesn't have to explain themselves
to their consumers. I get that. But there's EA, by the way, just to be clear, EA
holds like stakeholder meetings, shareholder meetings. So there are places where you
get that information, right? So whenever you are a company of this size, even though comparatively
to them are not that big, and you are telling people that you're not beholden to anybody,
whenever you do become beholden to anybody, you should tell them. There's nothing wrong
with telling people. And once again, nobody runs to you. You can tell people, hey, you
know, we have to make some difficult decisions and we implemented a board. And this is
why we did that, right? We have these four or five circumstances that, you know, we decided
that we needed a board in order to run this more elegantly. And I don't think anyone would
have hated it for it. But we're figuring it out now the day of. It's just not, not right.
How were they able to sign these away so many times? None of these look like they're
lapsed. Like all the ones that you're starting to see are all being signed away.
These are leans of some kind. So there'll be some kind of registered debt. So while
the one that you're looking at is over all assets, some of them might be for a specific
amount. So for example, if a lawsuit was found against them and they need to pay a certain
amount, that lien would be to register against them through the UCC for say like 800,000
or 80,000 for example.
Here's the problem though. All the ones that I've opened that are still active are
all ones that say all assets and all personal property of debtor, whether located,
whenever required, including but not limited to equipment, inventory, fixture, goods,
etc. All of them are listing nearly the same materials and some of them are overlapping
with all the currently active ones.
And it comes down to what it looks like.
Carinel Borreco owns everything now, everything,
based on these filings they own it all.
But there were also things that were signed away prior
to that that are still active to like this one,
Robert Dawson, whoever that is.
I don't want to Jason Caramanis,
I think that's through the IR one
that's been talked about for a while.
I can't remember what it's called,
YIR, our store, something like that.
Holdings is one of those showed and like you've got Yaya legacy trust that was done in October 2025
And then you have another one in here for Robert Dawson where they signed away a bunch of looks like physical material on what is that?
May 13th 2024
And then you have like this is this
It's getting weird dude and then you have this one now for Karen Elbarico where they just signed away everything
It's just the whole enchilada on that one
there's nothing outside of it. There's no addendum. There's nothing to reduce it. It's just gone.
Yeah. Like we say, this doesn't come out of nowhere. It's not, you know, it's not a meteor
falling from the sky. It's something that you can see with telescopes a long way off. Like this,
this should have been visible to anyone who has even the slightest shred of business sense. And,
you know, Steven's been around the block for a while. But then when you start considering
the fact that, for example, you know, his home changed hands out of his personal hands into
some kind of company or trust supposedly in November, it's been sold, you know. And
So like, has it been going on for a while and we're now just basically catching the end of it?
And it's just basically, you know, some kind of bullshit. Is it actually a mistake? Is the way he
positions it is like it's come out of the blue, but there's all kinds of information that would
have been available beforehand to him, which wouldn't make a mistake. And there's all kinds of
questions around the little he's acted on some of this stuff. So what is what is going on?
That's what I'm asking now, like, what the hell is going on?
To your point, Chronos, the only reason we're asking this question,
And I think this is a fair statement.
It's a little bit of a conjecture, but isn't the only reason we're asking these questions
is because they said, X, Y, or C, right?
They put themselves in this position.
There's a little pedestal.
They stepped on it and say, I am, you know, I am holding to nobody.
I am going to make this and this and that way.
These are my values.
You took that stand, right?
So that's the only reason we're asking these questions.
We're not asking these questions out of the head of, I don't know, whatever big studio.
Why are we doing this here?
So I know there's some people in chat, maybe that in their mind might be, well, we're
doing this to Steven, but we're not doing this to the head of Ubisoft.
That's not a conversation.
The point here is if you go out and you tell people, these are the circumstances
by which I want to run my studio.
That is a good thing to do, in my opinion, like you should do that often because you
put lines in the sand that make your community hold you accountable to those standards and
goals that you have, but then you have to act on them.
So like Chronos was saying, you see this coming a mile away, especially if you have
a chief financial officer, you know, someone that you're actually paying to do a role
that involves projections and filings, and if you're a big corporation, you're
You're doing quarterly reports, like you're doing all of that in order to balance your
accounts receivable and accounts payable.
So you know exactly how much money you have and how much you're owed.
So by consequence, if this is happening and you've said so much, then of course we're
going to hold you accountable to that.
This is not an unfair thing.
This is not that we're upset because the game is dead.
Yes, we might be.
But part of it is the fairness of you sold us this bill of goods, and now we're holding
you accountable to it.
Last thing I'll say here, because I see all these people sometimes saying it, the whole
dark thing, it's a little childish in my opinion, I would like to let that go in the
sense that that has nothing to do with the conversation.
I talked about it earlier actually.
I talked about it earlier, and I think I know what happened there entirely.
And I don't think part of that was his fault, but I do think part of it was his fault.
Narc made a bunch of claims about the game, and he did not like the way that it was being
run.
But a focus of that was that they no longer communicated with the players.
I think they were communicating with the players, just not him anymore.
And I think he got left behind.
I think so, yeah.
And, but there was a reason.
I think my fear is that this is the time to think about the circuit, like what
you're doing, looking at the company and whatnot.
Because there are people that are being let go.
Sure.
do with NARC. No, I think this is important, though, because people on the internet care about
this, right? I know that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really quite matter, right?
But NARC put out a video and that video claimed that the game was a scam and a lie. And he showed
video evidence of this in an area of the map that was misleading, because that area of the map
was an area that was not finished yet. And he went all the way to the very edge of the
map and then showed an area of the map that was not completed. And was like, the game is
dead. It's crap. They're lying to you. And most players didn't have the context for that.
I actually had to go on Asmongold's stream and disprove it, and I did it live, actually
brought my character out there and showed everything that was really going on. The other part
of that was that he was complaining about being ignored and that the community wasn't getting
communication like he used to. I think that was true. I couldn't see it from my perspective
at the time though, and the reason why is because I was currently the favored content
creator for Steven. I was the one who was getting all the messaging and Narc got left
behind because he started making comments to the development team that were critical.
And I didn't see that at all when I was interacting with Stephen until the end.
And I'll show you exactly what I sent up. I sent up a report to Stephen where I was very critical
of something that they did because they directly one-to-one copy stole a set of content from
another game called Arcage, which was Stephen's favorite game. And that was an entire feature
called Sportfishing. And I sent him this whole write-up. And it's not me being a dick. It's
me being critical and me being forward and giving all the context and information. And
the reason why I did that is because I noticed something outrageous. Not only were all of
the assets very, very similar between the two games, but the entire gameplay loop is exactly
the same. And then I saw this. See this boat? This boat is from Ashes of Creation.
This is the boat from Arcage. They're designed in exactly the same way because they serve
of the exact same purpose. There is a radar on the back that finds the fishing nodes. You
must go to the fishing node that looks like it has seagulls over it. You chum the water.
They both have the exact same thing. You fish and when you fish, it starts a mini game.
When you pull to the left or right, it does one damage to the fish. When you pull up
and down, it actually does more damage to the fish for each one of these. They're
one to one with each other. When you kill the fish by doing too much damage to it,
you're supposed to jump off the boat, get the fish and then pull it back in,
which is why you need the ramps on the back of this.
They have the exact same design for this reason.
The difference between these two things
is Steven said they added it for friction
in Ashes of Creation,
because he didn't understand why they did it in Arcage,
just that they did do it
and they directly copy pasted it over.
They did it in Arcage
because you could repair your boat for one gold,
even though they normally cost like 20 something.
That repair cost was only if somebody PVP'd you,
so you could recover very easily.
In Ashes of Creation though, there's no repair,
meaning you don't want to add extra friction or danger.
They're already risking their boat out there
in a PVP-infested water, and if they lose it,
they lose 25 to 50 fish worth of actual income.
It's a massive amount already.
So with that being said, they copied the system,
but they didn't understand the economic reasons
for the design.
And I brought this up to him directly.
And you know what happened?
He never spoke to me again, ever.
The moment I brought this up to him,
he cut off communication entirely.
And I think that's exactly what happened to Narc.
I think that is exactly what happened to Narc.
And that's not an unfair assumption to say.
There's some ego.
I mean, I don't want to say ego.
This happened to me not too long ago.
We made an entire system I was in love with.
I was so excited about it.
It was one of the things that, you know,
you're shaking to tell people.
It was like, oh, here it is, melodies.
And you know, we had sprites and everything drawn.
And in our community, people just went off.
And they said, like, I don't want to play this,
like, like that.
It's so complicated when people were really,
they weren't upset, but they were doing what you're doing,
which is what I consider gold.
And I'm not saying this, you know, I'm an expensory guy,
if I like what you're saying, I'm going to tell you,
I don't like it, I'm going to tell you.
So I think this is gold from a developer's perspective.
You want to hear your community tell you,
A, this is a land mine you're about to step on.
Don't do this, right?
But that's what you want to hear.
So when it happened to us, I took a day off,
say, hey guys, thank you so much for the feedback.
I need to process this,
because it's hitting my ego really deeply.
This is something that I feel very passionate about.
It's like my baby.
I didn't tell this to the people, right?
But I'm telling you, I guess I'm telling 4,000 people.
But at that point, it hit me really hard.
Because I was like, oh man,
how we really fail this hard
in making something that I'm passionate about.
But you know what?
Next day, immediately, next day I said,
you know guys, you guys are right.
this is a big deal, like, we are forcing our ideals
of what a game should look like on you,
we're gonna go remake it.
And the people that are here that come from my discord,
they know it was a very passionate four day conversation
of like, what are we doing now?
How are we changing it this and that and the other?
It was all we did as a team because we were told
that this is not designed by committee,
this is the players know best in any circumstance.
Because if they're not having fun,
It doesn't matter how much you like it.
So I guess this rambling goes to say
that whenever something like this happens,
you should be able to account to it and say,
you know what, I am having a moment of ego,
but my game, which is my child,
should not suffer this person only trait problem
that I'm having right now.
I should be able to call this back and say,
you know what Thor, thank you for the feedback.
You know what, Mark, thank you for the feedback.
We'll think about this, and we'll come back to you.
Or can you have a call with my dev?
How many times did they do that?
I'm sure they did once in a while,
but you know, sit with the dev and have a conversation,
explain to me better why this is a problem.
But that's what you do instead of saying,
well, you know what, I don't wanna talk to you anymore.
What is this, like third grade?
We're making a game, or you know.
Anyway, I see what you're having the screen, oh my God.
Why does the clown card keep filling up with more clowns?
Stephen saying, uh, I hate gross humans. The one that surprised me the most though, to be as Jamie thought we had a good friendship, but then he went sour so fast. It was weird.
I mean, it wasn't like they have large followings between the doomers Richie Jamie and the jackass Jlon.
It's just interesting to see people change.
You just out there shit talking to people supporting your game.
You can't, you can't do that, dude. If you do.
Rich is gross.
As corporate as these guys are, because they are very corporate, they're super
corporate. Where's your media training, dude? Like, if if you're not big,
where's your media training to know that you do not talk about like nowhere, nowhere, you don't
do this. You don't write. If you think some of these things, and I'm going to tell everybody
like in the chat, of course, there's people that upset us. You think like we don't have a
soul. Of course, somebody says something, we're going to be upset. We're human beings.
But we know better. We have to be mature and realize that this is not about us all the time, right?
So anyway, I mean, this is crazy. I don't know what whoever these people are, but if they're content creators,
or they are people that are like promoting your game, or they're people that matter in your community,
that is just so equally as bad as if you're just calling three players out at random.
It's equally as bad and this shouldn't happen not from from the leader of an entire company because
Employees and other people emulate their leadership and I thought I know that sounds like a kumbaya
But if you don't have a good moral compass other people are going to emulate it and that's how you know, you get very
That is a toxic companies that start kind of rotting from the top
It's the same thing you get with communities man. Like it's one of the things that we've got a community
It's filled up with a lot of creative badass people, right?
Like you guys are freaking around as shit and that's because it's cultivated, right?
Like over time we just get rid of people that are bad actors and jackasses and all kinds of shit
And we surround ourselves with people that we want to hang out with. It's the same thing instead of a company man
It's exactly the same thing inside of the company
Is if you if you hire people that kind of fit the vibe for what you're doing on top of everything else and if you are
are super gigatoxic, the ones who are not,
don't want to stick around.
And if you look at this,
Steven statements behind closed doors are grim, dude.
Like that's that shit you should just never say.
You could think it, you could be mad about it,
but like you can't say that shit.
I was even talking to Winky about this when I said this,
like to Winky and I was like, dude, this is shit.
And I ended up, after all of this shit went down,
I closed the DM with Margaret and Steven and all of them
and I left the official ashes of creation discord
it was yesterday.
I ended up leaving it finally yesterday
and just I was done with it.
I didn't install the game
and it was like fine, I didn't get a free of this.
And then today the game dies.
It's just like,
and I've got all the DMs and everything with Margaret.
I actually saved every single one of those DMs,
all the interactions that I had with her.
So I,
I heard you say that you,
I mean, I don't want to summon all that conversation.
But I remember,
because I've been here for the entire stream.
So I've heard the story of like,
you told her certain reports that were pretty damning.
They're inside.
And during that report,
they're telling you their answer on summarizing here
is a pretty corporate, like,
we want to like give them like three straights.
Like you get to be,
you get to be, what is it?
You get to suggest that certain people shouldn't be alive,
like three times, like that's pretty, I don't know.
But where I'm coming from is, isn't that the moment
where you say, you know what, I'll give you an example.
I know this might still not have made you happy.
But there's a core pro answer, and there's the,
you know what, we have a process
where we get people a couple of strikes.
But I think in this situation, you are correct, right?
Because I see the flaw in our policy, right?
I can't instantly change it
because I think that will be not in the best interest of people,
because I haven't tried it my way.
But let's do this.
I will have to give them a strike this time.
But from now on, let's meet.
And I want you to sit with my QA people.
I want you to see with my people.
And let's talk about revising this policy.
Let's do a community thing.
You see what I mean?
There are ways to say, I can't do what you
want me to do right now.
For two reasons, you don't run my company.
I can't let you.
then this is the beginning of a very fine threat of danger, because you come with good intention,
but somebody else might come with bad intention and want things their way, right? So I understand
that. But the second part should be let's actually build it together. And then we can make that public
and say, hey, you know, we met with a couple of people from our community. We have a change to
our policy. And from now on, if you say these things, you are out. Should have been the case
from the very beginning. But if it wasn't, I can understand how you can't just change it immediately.
But if the answer is like, you know, hypercorpo, then if you are so hypercorpo for the answer to
something this dangerous, why are you not so hypercorpo through treating your community with
dignity and respect whenever you're talking about them in closed doors? It seems like this
was something more for you. Like, this is like, you know, how this is kind of how we follow the
playbook for people that can actually move the needle, you know, where that doesn't know who was.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to show you something that you might find really interesting. And it was
shocking to me in terms of their their role distribution. Check this shit out. They had
on LinkedIn, we were able to pull this from LinkedIn, which is pretty useful.
We can actually pull the job distribution that they had.
We can see that they had 206 employees.
Stephen claimed that they had 250,
but these are just the ones who have LinkedIn.
So it's most of the company, right?
Yeah.
Check this shit out.
101 in Arts and Design,
65 in Engineering, nine in Quality Assurance.
Wow.
Okay.
And Thor, this is a good question.
I'm kind of sad that we are-
Oh, we got ads, wait, we got ads, we got ads,
we got ads.
I don't have to show that we're good.
Give me a sec, give me a sec, one sec.
Well, let me ask you a question.
I'm not right now, but he's gonna speak to our QA.
So I'd like you to think of this answer
and then I'll ask you again.
Sure, sure.
What is the role of QA in a...
Oh, you're just gonna be...
No, I'm just gonna answer it.
I'm just gonna answer it.
Don't do it.
I'm just gonna answer it.
No, I don't mean like as a QA,
because I don't, I understand the role of QA
in a really, really big company.
And I understand a role of QA
in a five person team like mine.
but in like, we call it like,
oh, don't ask, don't ask right now.
I call it depotters, because I think we are,
okay, I'll be quiet, I'll be quiet.
No, no.
This is good research.
This is good research.
I mean, of course, a lot of this is conjecture,
but it's good research.
Yep.
I'll ask you again.
I'll ask you again when you come out.
Yeah, cause I don't want to,
I don't want to the full one,
cause then I'll formulate an answer to be too perfect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can think through the ask.
No spoilers, no spoilers.
Yeah.
I was eating the person that interpret took with with their entire process would be
sure you have much more like,
from us,
sorry,
on us you're,
you're like 500% volume somehow that thing.
Yeah. Crazy lab. You're like in my bones.
All right. Ads are over. Okay. So this is the thing I wanted to show you first.
And then we'll, we'll talk about QA, but with this, um,
they had a hundred and one employees in arts and design. It's 65 in engineering.
They have seven immediate communication, five in marketing and nine in quality assurance.
The reason this is deeply surprising to me is in very large operations, you generally
operate on a 0.5 to 2.0 QA to develop a ratio.
You got one dev, high automation, you're going to have half a QA member per dev.
Low automation environment, you have like one to two QA per dev.
This is super weird to see it distributed this way.
I have never seen a company with this in balance like this ever.
It's, it's very strange to me to have such a small QA team.
Like even on like, say, uh, games like Overwatch, right?
You had like 12 QA people in like 12 depths.
What?
It, what?
Like, yeah, that's really weird, dude.
I have never seen it.
And it showed.
And I have, I have an anecdotal story of this because, um, our node,
our town inside of the game didn't have a mount associated with it.
I became the mayor.
you get a flying mount, they didn't have one.
Steven had to reach out to the QA team
and get that sent over to me.
And he contacted the QA team and then QA had to contact me
to be like, hey, we're gonna get a few
and they said they'll be there in a couple of minutes.
I waited an hour and a half live on the server
sitting inside of our town hall for an hour and a half
for QA to show up and do that.
And now I know why.
These guys are overburnt into shit, dude.
Like the idea of having nine QA personnel
for a team of that size is bananas, man.
That's great. Let me prepare you for, you know, because, you know, Twitter is like, you know,
how Twitter is. But to that chart that you have right there, you have to load it again.
But I remember, if you have those numbers, you think about them from the benefit of the
employee, right? And is it someone in Twitter will probably say this. They say, oh, but,
you know, people put themselves late, they label themselves in terms of roles and quote-unquote
Indie, I call them fake Indies.
These are fake Indies.
These are not really double A studios, but this fake Indie companies, they allow
people to kind of title themselves in such a way that is to the benefit of the
employee because they, that way they can pay them less.
I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but that happens a lot.
Right.
Somebody gets paid $60 an hour as a QA tester, but in this company, they
get to be a senior engineer.
So they get to pay, they could have paid them 45.
This is very common.
I'm not going to, you know, this is, it's a bad practice.
say you shouldn't do it, but people do this.
So that in balance might be that way.
It might be that the number of QAs distributed the other way.
However, however, if you were to take the number of engineers
that you saw there and you were to take the ratio that you
said and make it real, even if it was a one-to-one ratio,
you still have way too little engineers.
If you were to make that conjecture that I just made,
right?
So somebody in Twitter says like, oh,
This is very normal people like don't label themselves properly in LinkedIn.
Well, you don't want that as a company because you want people to have the real
role. But let's say, you know, you did it to their benefit.
Then that means you still have two little people to run a memo of the
magnitude that you're saying you're going to have shards, you know, areas
that do this and all this cool stuff.
You're going to have all these dreams, then you need people.
And, and also another thing, the, the marketing, the number
that I saw in marketing.
Makes no sense. Makes no sense.
Zero sense. Zero sense. It just doesn't connect with me with what the game needed. I didn't
see some areas of it that I can think of. I mean, you know this, but engineering and
development is not the same thing. I understand the roles on LinkedIn might kind of seem similar.
Yeah, we were talking about the community earlier because they have, you have to
have people that are managing the server, managing the databases, manning all that
like other stuff. That's a very different role. It's an incredibly different role for that.
Especially because they're doing with that, the, you know, the, um, what is it?
The server system or they're having a bunch of distributed microservers that
all work together for that. Like that is, that's cool.
It's really cool technology. And I actually would add a lot to the game,
but it was supposed to be dynamic and they never got it working dynamically.
But if you're having an engineering team and you're trying to get them to
build thing, that's what they're building. They're not building the game
content. Very.
Yeah. And that they might be building also. So the engineer teams can do crazy
stuff like technologies that don't exist or productivity tools for artists or whatever.
They come up with really cool stuff that is development, but also stuff that allows for
it.
For example, improvements to fast loading of projects or prototyping or stuff like that.
So they do crazy stuff.
You need them, but you need developers.
And the problem is you also get them, whenever you have a team that's big, you end
up, and I'm sure you've seen this one in your corporate life, you end up with
developers have become very, very, very senior and they know the code base better than everybody.
And you lose them. You can't afford. Yeah. Exactly. So what do you do for them? Let's
go back to whatever you want. Session planning. You build a succession plan immediately. You
say, if I lose this guy, this is what's going to happen. I'm going to need to hire three
people to do their job. Therefore, I don't want that. I don't want this guy to every
time I get a new project, I don't give it to them because I'm building, you know,
intense knowledge in one person and eventually I'm gonna miss them right so
if you're doing that for your employees which you should do then that goes to say
that you're gonna do it all the way to the top of your company therefore you're
gonna know exactly how much money you need in order to run your operation
because you don't want to lose the one developer that's that's how business
are run whenever they're run with like I don't know basic YouTube knowledge so
So it's not like an acceptable thing.
I guess I'll say it's the quiet.
That's not the only place they did that.
True, true exactly.
They did the same thing with players.
One of the reasons that I quit was due to moderation failure.
And the moderation failure that they had,
we were reporting up people to them
that were saying things like there was a guy on our server
that was spamming that he wanted to go and kill
all the LGBT people on our server.
That's what he wanted to do.
And he was trying to form a group to do it.
That guy was just on our server.
the first time that we've seen a wave of hate or harassment,
we've seen it across the board and we saw it,
there was a big issue with it in September
when there was a huge amount of outcry about it as well.
So it's an issue they haven't fixed over time
and it's only getting worse
and they refuse to do anything more about it.
And with this, this was the official response
from Margaret in that group conversation to me.
And they said that their stance,
their way of handling this is to try
and do instead of bands,
they said our current moderation framework
does not always move directly to permitted bands
for first time offenses of this nature.
In many cases, we issue warnings first
with the expectation the behavior can improve.
If it doesn't, we escalate.
They were applying that to everyone, everyone.
What was the data that they had?
That was like three days ago.
Yeah, this was all like three days ago.
I know it just says time on it,
but it was like three days ago.
Yeah, so this was, this is why I quit the game.
I quit the game four days ago.
Actually, it was four days ago now.
Yeah, because it's the first.
So I did that on the 28th.
So yeah, four days ago, yep.
You know, that you have highlighted right there, right?
If you need to make a point, by the way,
I'm still largely in that.
This isn't, yeah, this isn't an AI answer.
It's basically an AI answer.
If she can feel this answer that you had at the top, right?
And when you had blocked,
and then the next phrase is however,
like if the next phrase starts to color,
it should have been however.
Everything is saved, everything is saved.
It should have been however.
It should have been however.
That's when you say, you know,
chat GPT, you don't run my life.
I know what I'm doing and I know how to treat
other people with dignity.
So I'm gonna tell them the truth.
I understand I have policies that I am beholden to,
but then I'm gonna cross the line into,
I understand that this is not normal.
Like this is not somebody went and like,
spawn camp somebody.
Yeah, no, it's nothing like that.
It's nothing like that, right?
So when we're crossing it to something
that is like this extreme,
then we should be able to say we have a policy that right now doesn't allow us to take this
extreme measures.
However, let's work on something together.
Let's work on it together, right?
And we'll do something that is actually good for all of us.
Because we said to everybody, we're going to make this game with you for you.
I was there.
I was there.
I listened to the interviews.
I was there.
So I know this was said.
So here we are.
I guess where I'm coming from is my problem with all of this, is that we have this corporal
answer for when we are uncomfortable with being challenged.
But at the moment of marketing, at the moment that we had to sell the game, we were hyper,
you know, I don't know, like, I don't know, we were larger than life.
We were, you know, we're going to do all these things and we're not beholden to
anybody, but then you are beholden to what? A piece of paper? If I am Stephen, and well,
let me not say that. If I am the CEO of Little Legendary, and somebody comes to me and tells
me, hey Kendall, this happened in your game, I'm not going to go and find my HR manual
and pull my blue notebook. I'm going to say that's messed up. Let's change it. Period.
And then I will take accountability and I will show up in Twitter or everybody and say,
Hey, guys, I messed up or something was messed up.
This is not right.
Unacceptable period.
End of story.
Life goes on.
You're not a worst movie for that.
I think the biggest thing with this man,
the one that really bothers me about it,
is how heinous the messaging was that we reported up.
Because like one of the people who reported up was,
they were claiming that they were from the people
who had my house swatted last year.
It was just in the game.
They were just doing that.
Another guy in there was claiming
that I sexually abused the animals at a rescue.
Another one was in there telling everyone that they wanted to get a group together to kill all the lgbt people on the computer on in on the server
Like this is these are the people who report they weren't like minor things
They were like big fucking deal things and this was the response that we got to that and I quit the game over
I was like i'm done dude. That's really shit. This response is terrible
And I was like what is wrong with you like no, that's not base dude. What's wrong with you?
Sit down in the corner for 10 minutes. That's where you get to be like call that shit based
That's wrong. Generations cook, dude.
But like this shit is just, it's outrageous to me.
Cause like any other game, they just be banned, man.
You know?
That's what I don't, so here's my question.
It's an honest question cause you come from,
from this experience, but.
Oh yeah. There was one more too.
There was a dude that was actually on our server
every single day, shit talking Jewish people every day.
On a new alt every time there was another guy
that would just praise Hitler openly and in global chat.
Even though Hitler was actually caught by their filter
he just like spaced the letters out to write Hitler. And they just did this all the time.
And they get, they get reported. Nothing would happen. And then we get this response with this.
And I'm like, that's wild dude. Like that makes no sense.
The thing to me, and this is an honest question that I have, because I, I failed to, I mean,
I've been part of 4100 companies most of my career, but I still don't understand this.
I don't get it. I don't get why. Why? Like, for example, if we don't want our game,
any game, right, or MMO, to have like, I don't know,
dangerous political discourse,
because our game is a game, right?
We are in some fantasy world,
and that's what we want to sell to players.
They're here to have fun, right?
Father of Two shows up, has an hour and a half to play a game.
They don't want to deal with all of this.
So what I mean is it shouldn't go both ways.
It doesn't matter who,
it doesn't matter if it's like anti this or anti that.
If it's political in nature,
you're out. And then the person would be like, Oh, well,
then you're disagreeing my ideals. No, no, I'm disagreeing
with the fact that you don't read my frickin TOS.
No, I think it should just be TOS, man. I really do. It doesn't
it doesn't matter if it's political, political is fine. You
can make political statements. It's different when it crosses
over into hate speech. That's the difference. When you're
saying, I'm going to go and kill this group of people
based on their sexuality or their race identity. That's
what either both sides correct? If somebody goes and
says, Oh, this person voted for this person, you know, they should like X, Y, or Z.
Oh, yeah, no, we don't want any of it in the service and not talk about politics.
So be it, but in force return to service.
Otherwise don't have one.
I think has the exact that's that's that's where I'm coming from.
So I see what you're saying.
I just wanted to clarify because like it, I don't think political discourse is a problem.
I don't think that's ever a problem.
Even if people are passionate, I think when it crosses the line into hate speech,
you've got a huge issue.
Like that's wild, right?
And that's a different kind of thing.
It's the difference between,
I don't like that you voted for this person
and then a person saying like,
they wanna kill all the gay people on the server.
That's a very different kind of animal, yeah.
But my point is like, as the dev of,
and I call it a dev as the studio,
you get to decide that in your TOS, what's the line, right?
And then we get to play your game
if we want to or not, right?
If you decide that talking about strawberries is too much,
then it is what it is.
And we have to deal with the consequences of that, right?
And the moment you say, like, oh, strawberries and bananas,
and you get banned.
But I guess what I mean is if you have a TOS,
because you show them.
You show them, hey, this goes against what you guys are.
This is like, I mean, I feel at that point,
if anybody, the pirate software or some rando,
is showing me my own TOS and schooling me.
At that point, I need to call seven or 10 other people
from my company and say like, what the hell is happening?
Like I'm getting schooled over here
by something that I should have known.
You should have, this is your role to prepare me for this
and this shouldn't have happened.
Let's fix it.
That should have been the answer immediately.
Like end of story, right?
Like if something's wrong,
if you did this to me Thor,
if no idea, I would be so incredibly embarrassed.
And in my team, we would have a horrible day.
We would have a horrible day.
So it was actually, this was that moment I set aside
from the above as per your own community rules
and restrictions, both of these users are in violation
of the following circled standards.
The third circle standard explains that you hold the
sole right to determine what is harassment,
meaning you've determined that all of this within
the context provided is not harassment
and is acceptable behavior.
I slapped the shit out of them with that,
using their own TOS with it,
because it's exactly what it is.
And under the TOS.
January. And it says under this it says disparaging, defaming,
name-calling, engaging in any form of discrimination against
another member of the community or engaging in any sexual
misconduct, all sexual related stuff here. And you agree that
the solicit of conduct that identified as harassment above
is not exhaustive. This is their community standards. This
is their TOS. And they were not enforcing it.
Yeah. Yeah. And to be I don't know if I'm right. Oh,
I understand. Hold up. Tiger, if you are not seeing my
YouTube videos, because you say you miss me on there, unsubscribe from
my channel and re-subscribe from it. It is a bug. We've had that happen with
other people in the community. Just unsubscribe and re-subscribe. You're
good to go. I release videos every day, man. Anyway, continue.
My question to you, and this is honest, honest lack of a, I understand it, but
I'm no more like end user agreements that I know TOS. I don't know how
enforced all TOS is, but here's my question. There is a, there is a
power dynamic that comes from the terms of service of a game, in my
opinion. So whenever you have someone that says, A, I have these five points in my TLS,
someone just breached two of them, but I'm going to choose not to enforce them. That
also means that the other five points are subjective to their choice. It's their power.
So they can say, oh, one of the things of my TLS is that I am not allowed to revoke
their access to the game because I feel like it. But if I was able to not follow
0.4, I could also not follow 0.1, right? So I could kind of do whatever I want to. So that's
why I think what some people say, well, you know, like, we have to interpret them. No,
no, no, this is not like a religious document. This is this is something that you're signing
whenever you're, you know, paying and logging into this game. So this has to be held
by both sides. If the TOS says these are the things that will be helped by you, this is
how you will receive the service, then that means we're going to enforce that. It's a
two-site relationship to my understanding. Is that the case or can companies kind of
use TOS however they feel like? Is it enforceable because they feel like it?
So a TOS is actually just an enforceable thing of these are the terms of your license
agreement to access the game. That is what a TOS generally is. They can cut off your access to
the service based on violation of these terms. It's supposed to be a legally binding document
effectively where if you tried to sue them in a court of law, they could go actually judge. They
violated these terms of service. And then the judge has to decide if those are enforceable
terms or not, right? If it is something that passes into like, we don't allow people of a
certain race in our video game, then the judge is going to say shit to the company, right?
But if it's something that's like general misconduct or hacking the game or anything like that,
totally. But it has to be, it's basically a, do you want to find out in the court of law? And if
you do, then violate our terms and then we'll ban you and then we'll see what happens in court.
Right. Like that's really what it is. And it's more of, to be honest with you, for
the average player, it's more of just a set of rules and guidelines. But you can't
supersede local law or state law with the TOS. That's not allowable. Like it doesn't
What would it be?
Is it a fair assumption, and when I made an assumption I made it in the legal term?
Am I safe to assume that if I am beholden to TLS, let's say you are the service, and
I am the player, if I am held accountable to the TLS, that's like a one-way relationship.
Thor enforces TLS on Kendall because Kendall is the player.
So isn't it also fair for Kendall to assume that Thor will enforce the TOS on Kornos?
Yes.
That's what we're calling a transitory expectation of service.
So I am expecting you to hold accountable other players because if not, if I'm the
only one being held accountable, there's a problem, right?
So yeah, basically what you're saying is that...
Which is why when we see this, it's so devastating.
on the left over here, because that's exactly that. It's a player violating TOS willfully
and the debt is bailing them out. It immediately erodes trust. Now, I don't know if there's
any legal implications for that whatsoever, right? I don't think there is. There might
be that I wouldn't understand. I don't care. But it erodes trust to your players. Yeah.
If you make a TOS and you follow it for some players, but not for others, then it's
going to erode trust, which is exactly what happened in that conversation with Margaret
for me because the moment that happened, I was like, okay, so I'm just not playing your
game anymore by like, I literally just uninstalled it that day. I was out. I'm like done.
I was like, this is not coming back from that dude.
Yeah. Someone in the chat is saying like, you know, like companies don't write their TOS in
order to be beholden to it. I understand that look, that's not what we're saying, right? We're
not saying they're writing the TOS to like put laws on themselves. But what we're saying is
there's something called, you know, transit transitory expectation assumption of service,
which is just a simple term to say,
if this rules apply to me,
then they also apply to the next guy over.
I can ask the company that provides the service
to enforce the rules to the other person, not to themselves.
We're never saying Thor and I are saying that they created a,
you know, actually we created rules for them to abide.
We're saying they created rules that Kendall, Thor,
and Cronus have to abide.
So when Cronus-
It works because if you walk into a bar and it says on the wall,
it's okay to shoot somebody here. You should probably expect to be sure. If you go to a buyer
who says, no shooting someone there, you're going to expect to not get shot in that bar.
Exactly.
That's about the expectation. You're expected to not do something, but you also expect the others
who are also there under those terms to also be compliant as well. That's the point.
Exactly. And somebody said, TLS should apply to all users fairly, not the company.
Perfect. But what happened here is that Thor is saying, don't apply to your company, apply to
to this other individual that did X, Y or C. That makes perfect sense, right? So Thor is
saying, another user broke your TOS, please enforce completely fair. That's completely
like there's nothing wrong. He's not the man that you do when you're reporting someone.
You say, Hey, I believe this person is breaching the terms of service. Please, could you review
this report? That's what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, rough. I have, I have something
weird. One moment. Okay, so I was just linked an article that was listing Jason actually
sorry. I need this. I was just listed like linked an article. Jason Carmanis. Oh, yeah,
he's on this one, which is the one from Yahya Legacy Trust links back to Vema, which is
the multi-level marketing scam over here that was closed down by the FTC that was founded
by Benson K. Lauren and Karen Borienko. And Karen Borienko is currently the owner of all
the IP fashions of creation as of the 14th. Why are they all connected? Why are they
all connected? Jason Caramanus is also connected in this under another UCC filing. We'll
to pull this up right here under Yaya Legacy Trust,
which we were looking at earlier,
including this one.
This was, yeah, this was the other one for this.
That was Karen El-Burienko on this one.
And then also, Jason Caramanus on that.
Which I think is this one.
There's too many of these.
Now this is John Warwood.
Yeah, this is, mm.
So you have all of these rights holders now
that have picked the entire company apart and have owned it since August 1st,
2025 and January 14th,
2026 and all of them link back to Vema,
which is a company closed by the FTC.
As in like they were all or like some of them.
No, no. Do you know what this means?
Do you know what this means?
I was individually sanctioned to the, to one of the higher degrees.
Like he was very much like,
Yeah, I have the hat on right now so I can say this with full strength and with my whole chest
Allegedly
This could be maybe yet could allegedly could be maybe this might be it stands to reason
It is possible that these people are the board
It could be it could be right. I mean it's it's conjecture that a reasonable person could a lot right, right? Yes
Yeah. And it's not allegedly because we're not alleging it. We're just saying it was conjecture
that any person with two fingers of forehead can make. Yeah. Okay.
I honestly think this is the wildest part about this is because it's just we don't know who
this board is. They never said who this board is. And now you have all of these people
that are tied back to fraudulent activity that are now in ownership over a great deal
of assets. In fact, in totality of the assets. So we never had this shadow board.
we never knew who they were and now you get this. That's deeply concerning to me. Mames and
tinfoil hat and jokes aside. That's incredibly concerning as a player and sirely.
I don't understand why we didn't know about any of it when it is part of the core philosophy
of the studio. To my understanding, you know a lot more than me, but I think this was a core
part of the philosophy, right? Like, you know, we are our own people, you know, we're going to self fund.
Wasn't this like the, I mean, maybe am I thinking that that am I making that bigger than it was?
Or was it that was a big selling point? That was a big selling point. I mean, I might have many
of you guys, that's why you supported the game, right? Because you have the respect of that.
Yeah, no, that's exactly it. And now you actually see this, I think the other thing
Everything that was really interesting in this is also included for Kiran Boyanko.
All accounts receivable, payment intangibles, general intangibles, contract rights, customer
lists, player data, user metrics, email lists, data analytics, advertising revenue, digital
wallets, payment processor accounts, including Stripe, PayPal, Apple, Google and other platforms.
Royalties, subscription revenue and all proceeds thereof.
It is literally the whole enchilada.
It says accounts receivable, but does it say accounts payable?
It says accounts receivable, no accounts payable.
So accounts payable of course are all the debts, if the debts stay in a company that's
dying, then you know, that's bankruptcy.
It's going to bankruptcy.
So all of the profits have just been deaded away and the debts stay.
But not the debts or the what's owed, which also includes the accounts payable.
I'm not seeing my grandmas, so I'm going to step out, so I thank you for having me on
this show.
I'm going to call my grandma.
So I'll catch you guys later.
Bye chat.
Bye.
Yeah, I'm not seeing anything unpayable on this.
I'm not seeing anything.
It might be up there when it says like, you know, stuff about the debt when I don't
want to like make way too much conditions.
I don't know if, but I mean it sounds like the, what you're reading here, if
I'm understanding it correctly from what you're, what you're at, it's hard
to read, but you're saying it says all the benefits, all of the accounts receivable,
All the good things that the company has are moved to the ownership of the debtor, but
it doesn't mention anything.
At least I didn't read anything of the actual cost debt, but it does mention intellectual
property at the very top, right?
Yes, it's all intellectual property, all the copyrights, all the trademarks, also
copyrights registered or unregistered or unregistered.
It's collateral not ownership.
It says all assets of the debtor, whether now or hereafter, acquired and whether located,
including without limitation, all tangible and intangible property, personal property,
including inventory and all of this.
And this is, or developed or operated by the debtor.
And in this case, ashes of creation intrepid and Steven Sharif specifically are counted
as the debtors.
It says assets.
Yeah.
It says assets on it, not liabilities.
Got it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm.
And this is why, like to be real with you,
this is not the side of business that I understand at all.
This is not my vision.
This is not overly complicated.
The problem with this is that it is because it's somewhat
simple, is that it's very dangerous.
Because what could happen is like, you know,
there's some amount of, let's say, you know,
I give you $100, and in return for those $100,
you give me like, you know, I don't know,
three computers, which is a really bad trade for you.
But, you know, that's what you're giving me, right?
So this is the equivalent of like, A, I can't pay you the $100, but here's the assets.
So I get that.
But the thing is whenever we're giving also rights to the IP and stuff like that, and
there's no conditions here, by the way.
In every contract that I've ever read that has anything to do with something like this,
there are conditions about performance.
There's conditions about like, A, this is how we're going to utilize the funds
that we're receiving.
It's like a very thorough outline.
But that's not normal for UCC.
That's a financing statement.
So it's just shit changes hands.
I'm not seeing anything for that, for any other stuff.
I don't see where it adds, but rough day for this guys.
Rough day.
Yeah, no, it's super weird, man.
I wonder why we didn't hear from anybody.
And none of the devs even said anything either.
No.
Nope.
Not a word.
I'm sure you woke up this morning expecting this to happen, huh?
Dude, I was in bed and Shay busted it in my room and then was like, Thor, you need to wake up.
The ashes of creation is closing and Steven is stepping down.
And I was like, well, like, I was like, I only got two hours of sleep after 36 hours of being
awake. So that's what I'm running on right now. And then I jumped into stream and I was
like, okay, well, I got three hours to figure this shit out. So I sat on discord with it
with the guys from our guild and then figured out that as much research as possible. We've
just been researching it all day. Yeah.
It's painful.
It's rough, man. Powered by rage. Yeah. A little bit powered by rage. Like I'm
to be honest with you, there's a lot of spike going on with this because this is, um, it
sucks to ask, man. Well, he just does. Like there's no, there's no cool way around it.
There's no fun way to like flutter that away. And like, I'm trying to make jokes and names
along the way, you know, like we're in a tinfoil hat and shit, but like, dude, this is awful.
This is unironically awful. There's 250 people that are at a job. There's tens of
thousands of us that were sold this game for years. And then this is how it ends.
a shit way for it to end, right? Just bought the game unfortunate refund it. Yeah. I wouldn't
say actual scam confirmed because I can't allege that I would say that this feels like
a scam feels like it. And that's the problem that I have with it then. And I'll give you
a reason why it feels like a scam, right? If we go into this, you look at their Kickstarter,
they have a byline on here that says our promises to you, right? So it's finally
the case that Assecration does not launch, we promise to refund all backers in full. The assets,
everything was signed over to Karen Elboriego on January 14th of this year, so just recent, right?
At the same time, they launched into Steam on December 11th, which means that December 11th
came around. They launched the game into Steam, thus potentially fulfilling this Kickstarter
oath, meaning they may not be held liable in court for this. Then on January 26th to January 30th
is when STEAM would have paid them for December. And I know that because I sell games on STEAM.
They do it every month on the 26th to about the 30th on average. So with that in mind,
everything got signed over to Karen Elborioeco, including all of the income.
And then all of it went to, conceptually, this is what it looks like. It looks like it
all went to Karen and then they put out a letter to their employees saying none of you are getting paid.
So you have a timing of events here where you have the game coming out on Steam on December 11th.
You have all of the assets being signed over on January 14th
and then you have the money coming in on January 26th to 30th.
And then on February 1st, you tell the employees they don't get any money because there isn't
any because it's already gone somewhere else.
That's why I'm pissed at them.
If I say this back to you, what you're saying is, before December, everything was signed,
so then it didn't release.
You said it was a lien.
It was not signed away.
It was a lien.
What is the difference with that?
Okay.
Well, this is, again, complicated here.
The thing is that there is a connection between,
ugh, it's so complex,
but it depends on how it's written too.
So it depends on, it's kind of like,
it's conceptually alone,
but what it really means is I have a right to these things
under certain conditions and then in return,
I'm gonna give you something, right?
So we don't know what Ash has got, right?
I mean, let's say you were signing something, right?
I'm reading it, yeah.
I understand what this is.
Where's the benefit to ashes on the situation, right?
So that's where I'm not,
we don't have the entire picture
because something had to happen.
I mean, I imagine, right?
If this is in good faith, right?
Then the money, well,
so I think we've had this entire conversation
with one missing key point.
This is, what did the studio gain from doing this?
And if the benefit is that somebody else is going to cover the debts, that they are outstanding
debts and they need to be covered and somebody else is going to cover them, then I don't think
that's a bad thing.
It was done too late because they ran out of money.
But your point, which is really good, is before December this agreement was done,
whatever it ends up being.
whenever the game releases on Steam, I'm sure it produced a lot of money.
It's an expected game.
I'm sure it sold.
We've seen about two thirds of the player base based on reviews are
people who bought it on Steam.
Yes.
Pretty huge.
So I mean, I imagine it's not a tiny number.
Um, at least sufficient to pay the staff for a month.
I imagine maybe not, but who knows?
Cause they have, I think you said that they had a very, very high
footprint or burn rate.
So who knows?
But let's say it was sufficient to pay, you know, enough.
you're saying that because it was all your conjecture, I'm trying to protect you.
The conjecture we're making is that, you know, it seems like it could be possible that this agreement was signed before.
And now that the steam is paying, the money is going elsewhere.
Therefore, legitimately and truly, the studio doesn't have the money to pay the people.
So in this case, it's a UCC.
Yes. So in this case, it's a UCC uniform commercial code, which is a lien, a legal claim made by a lender against
to borrow business assets such as equipment, inventory, or accounts receivable. So Karen
Elborioco has filed a lien against Ashes of Creation against Intrepid Studios and Steven
Sharif for the entire ownership of everything. And this is counted as an active lien for
this. So that's what the filing is. So she doesn't own it. It's like the start
of that process of I want everything. I paid you. I want everything is what that
is. The part that's really weird about this is it's strange bedfellows. When
you're looking at Yaya Legacy Trust, you have that person in Jason, Kariminas, and if you
look at this one, Karen Elboriego, these are two people that are both involved with Vema,
which Vema is, and we could say this explicitly, Vema is or was a nutrition company that's
privately held multi-level marketing company that was shut down by the FTC for engaging
in deceptive business practices and being a pyramid scheme. Both of them were involved
with this, both of them are associated and tied to it some way. And we've seen
across the other things that we looked into. So this is highly suspicious, but it is a lean,
it is not technically outright ownership. You are not saying, let me make sure that we have some
detail here. You are not saying that that company has any relationship to this lean. You're saying
that there is a... The people have a relationship to both. Exactly. Which that speaks a little
bit more to character than to actuality, but it is also a really good point because if
So if you're trying to save your game, you're going to do it, you know, we imagine with people
that, you know, have succeeded in the space of business and all that stuff, but we are
not saying that there's some relationship between BEMMA and Ashes in any way.
We're just saying that people that were there together, maybe they knew each other,
and you know, that's maybe how connections were made, and you know, we are just saying
that.
Okay, so I can see that.
I think with the UCC thing is that,
at least the way I understand leans,
they are pretty much a way of somebody
that is owed something to make a public claim
to say, you cannot move this asset,
it's mine if you fail to pay me, right?
That's the way I understand it,
at least for these bigger ones.
So it does have an impact on the company's
right to credit, which is bad for companies
are half lines of credit or stuff like that. So if they were paying their employees through
lines of credit, which is not uncommon for big businesses, then that might be also part
of the reason why they couldn't pay it. Once again, just conjecture because I have no idea.
But yeah, it's quite a show.
Yeah, you can see this here. So the defendant's name in the suit, which was filed by Arizona
resident James J. Ableton, include Janus, I don't pronounce that, CEO Ogo Randy,
Ray and other top executives, as well as high-level distributors such as Kim Pui, Jason Carmanus,
and Alex Morton, a former VEMMA affiliate.
So you have all of these people traveling in the same circles, all touching around the
same companies, but they are individually both owed something by ashes of creation
and intrepid to the extent that they were able to put in a UCC claim, a lien against
the company for something owed.
So that's really interesting.
The only thing that I can think of here is that their intent is to dissolve it.
That's what it appears to be, it appears to be intent to dissolve it.
I would say that that is a not an unfair conjecture to me.
Like I said, in my story, when it happened to me, January I made the board, their first
meeting on February, that's exactly what happened.
They threw me out and then immediately started the process of like kind of pretty much
selling it all to pieces, which in my case didn't work because I was lucky enough
to have an incredible relationship with every single one of my clients and they said, Kendall's
not here. We're not doing business with any of you. I made another company. The clients
moved over with me and they stayed with nothing. But it was pretty intense. It was pretty
horrific. A lot of things happened there and I'm willing to be vulnerable to just show
you guys what can happen. So one of the things that happened there was that they
They didn't pay taxes quarterly, so therefore the IRS came to me and said, hey, you owe
all this money.
I'm like, hey, I was like, oh, like, on February, you're asking me for taxes from April.
And it was something that hurt me for years, like it was like behind me for years.
Thankfully, you know, I'm a very detailed person, so I had everything in order and
I was able to prove it.
But I had to fight it for the longest time, so it's the people that are running certain
parts of this company could be hurt for a long time if they're involved in like proving
and disproving all this stuff that's going on, which is the kind of stuff that you don't
want to happen. That's why someone in a position of power would say, I'm out because they can
then very publicly say, hey, I wasn't part of this. I don't need to be dealing with
any of this. But in the end, if you care about your people, this wouldn't have
happen, people would have had a notice and the money would have been there to pay them
or you would have dissolved earlier.
Because they had assets to sell if they wanted to sell.
I do want to, one thing someone said, they said, oh, there's no indication that that claim
is even real.
It could be a false claim.
Under California state law, it is a felony to file a fraudulent UCC.
So what you're saying is that person performed a felony.
I find that to be unlikely.
I think it is more likely that the claim there
is a valid claim, even if it overreaches
on what should be paid back.
That's, I think that's valid.
Whatever's going on.
To be clear, those are not bad.
That's not like, I used to see,
I used to see claiming, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
That's just, I also want to frame that.
It is the players.
Even though, of course, it is for all of us.
But what I mean is like, sometimes there are certain,
I wouldn't say that this is normal, right?
But there might be a situation where repayment is not possible.
And they say, I will give you certain benefits in this transaction.
And in return, I will have to hold you accountable.
Because you do not have ways of repayment.
So I will freeze these assets.
Normally, it's not that easy to see.
But I'm just saying that there are ways to this to not be necessarily an evil thing.
But in this case, it kind of looks like,
if somebody's doing this,
I don't think they do it because they're in some partnership.
I think it's a way of like actually saying,
I'm gonna be repaid.
My question remains, what did the studio gain?
Yeah, it's gotta, you don't know.
That's the problem.
Yeah, the only time I would be willing to start talking
about this being an actual like a scam
or something like that, intentionally evil,
That wasn't mismanagement.
I'm talking like it's actually intentionally a plan.
The only way I would get there is that there was
zero benefit to ashes.
Because that means we're just moving things too.
We're moving the money elsewhere
so that it lands away from the people.
And that is like obviously, you know,
well I wouldn't say obviously,
but I'd say like,
leave the trajectory to be able to do it.
This looks suspicious and shit.
And I feel like very comfortable saying that you have,
You have the timings here that just feel wrong.
You know, you've got the idea of, you know,
the game launched on Steam on December 11th
after a very, very long period of time
where they said that they weren't going to be on Steam
and there was no plans to be on Steam,
just kind of seeming land of nowhere.
You have the filing for that on January 14th.
You have the first payment from December 11th
going through on around January 26th to January 30th.
And like if it, and then suddenly all of these emails
that are coming out from former employees saying
that they're not getting paid.
You know, so like if we've, if we've got all these pieces
in alignment here, this is suspicious, man.
Like at the very least that's such a shit.
It just is because there is a world in which it could be
that all that money goes over to the person
who's made the lane there.
There's a world where they've just embezzled the funds.
There's a world where like there's all these different
pathways that could be, but we don't know what the
answer is.
And I don't think we will get that answer.
I don't think we will.
I think that that has to come out in court of law
and it's easy to sit around and conjecture about
everything, but we don't know. And it looks bad. Whatever it is,
it's not going to be a good thing. That there's nothing that comes out of
this that is a positive thing whatsoever. It's just suspicious as shit.
And I think the scariest has bad intentions for sure.
It feels like bad intentions. And like the reason why I say overall,
it feels like bad intentions is it's too tidy.
When you have things in business where the players are losing and the
business is failing, but everything's really clean. That's when I think it's the most suspicious.
And you have a situation where it looks like cash, it looks like mayhem, but you look a
little bit closer and everything is just perfectly at the right time. You have everything that's
like, oh man, they had this obligation of the players, but then they launched on steam
and oh, and then they closed the business really close afterwards, but they closed it
right after the time period where they'd get paid by steam. And the employees don't
actually get the money. Oh, but they have a lien against them from this other person.
just too tidy, man. It screams that something is wrong.
Like I said, they also moved into the next calendar year. Therefore,
all the assets from last year are solidified in their taxes. There's, you know, probably anything
that is required for them to account for in terms of fiscal year stuff probably ends in April. Most
companies, so everyone knows, most companies normally do May to April, like they roll their
fiscal year four months into it because that's where the deadlines of filing
in the taxes are so it's very beneficial so if that's their timeline this is
like very beneficial in terms of like being able to call the assets in the
year last year as in like deduct them from everything they need to pay but then
this year to solve it and they have an extra year to go and file that right so
it's quite a lot but real quick because a ton of people are asking I'll 10
second summary. I'm Kendall. I'm the studio head of a tiny, tiny little studio called
The Legendary. We make a game called Shape Protocol. We were here in the, in December.
I'm only here because this has happened to me before. I had a company stolen from me when I was
very, very, very young. And I kind of understand the mechanics of what's going on here.
But not enough to, to, to call anyone out precisely. But, yeah, I mean, I'm in a
a situation where I am pretty close to this, and I also, if somebody's here, by the way,
if you are here and you're a dev from that game, I mean it sincerely. Find us in some
way. Don't do this alone. Find us in some way. Reach out, send an email, whatever. We
made a tweet earlier. I'm sure Thor's community will help you too. Don't fight this alone.
You're talented.
This is not your fault.
Find a way that I know there's a chance that you might not even get certain benefits if
they don't even have the money to sustain their side of the coin.
Cobra doesn't work the way people think as easily in the United States.
Make sure that you are looking and you are protecting yourself as quickly as possible.
If you can, make sure that whenever you're looking, if you're okay with it, I'll
take 10 seconds or whatever, make sure when you're signing your NDAs or whatever they
to give you, you do not sign an on compete.
Don't sign any of that.
If you're being let go, you don't have to sign that.
In the United States, you're not forced to do that.
That's like, that's a lie.
Wait, do not give legal advice.
Okay.
So let's talk to a lawyer.
Talk to a lawyer.
I am sorry.
Talk to a lawyer.
You don't want to be in the home for legal advice.
Trust me.
That's a bad idea.
Okay.
So I retract my statement.
I apologize for that.
There you go.
I would say make sure that you are informed
and you're taking yourself, be careful what's going on.
And of course, if you want to,
there are many studios out there
that are looking for talented people.
Start looking, don't wait,
because everything takes time
and we know this wasn't you.
And I'm sorry this is happening to you, so refer.
So I have a really interesting piece
that we can take a little bit of the tinfoil
back out of the hat.
In California, payroll and wage claims
generally take precedence over UCC security interests
when a company is in financial distress,
which means even in the reality
where potentially this UCC went through
and it was being abided by,
the employees should still be able to be paid
out of the income that was made from steam.
To be clear, and they'd take precedence over it
because California protects workers
and it's a California-based company.
Yeah, so employees will get paid before UCC
in this scenario specifically.
So it really comes back to where's the money?
Like if you didn't have enough runway for this,
like how did you not see that coming?
You had to have.
So why aren't you paying the employees?
There's no excuse.
The question to you is based on the drawing you made earlier
with the conjectures we made earlier,
if the money didn't land in the actual company,
it's not material, like there's no use to see anything.
the money was landed elsewhere, unless it could be proven that it was with intention
of repayment. But the thing that you showed shows that they now own all of these things.
That's not repayment. That's the actual agreement they made. I don't know if I'm making sense.
Let's say in December 11th, sorry, in August or October, you said, I don't remember,
they signed something that says, all of this belongs to you now. That's not really
repayment at that point. We're just saying you own all these things. So whenever the company makes
any money, it's going to go to you. So if then we launched this new game and all the money goes
elsewhere, that's not a UCC repayment. That's the contract that they made. Yeah. Does that make
sense? Yeah, we don't know what that is. We have no, we'd have no ability to know.
We have no ability to know. I hope that I'm wrong. But yeah, basically like what I'm trying
to do is kind of map the whole thing out. And what it looks like here is, is they've got a sizeable
amount of money that came from Steam. And we know that. And the reason we know that is because
if we come down here and we actually look at reviews, we're going to do this. I put in a review
that is negative. My review was automatically flagged as product received for free. And it's,
it's marked as that because I bought it from Intrepid before they were on Steam. And when
they went to Steam, they make you connect your account and then your, your review gets flagged
as this. If we go down here, we can actually go to all of the reviews and we can say
purchase type steam purchasers. So all of those are just steam
purchasers, right? And then other. It stands the reason that
you can actually search through this, you can see only the
people that are not marked with product receipts for 50 zones
are my friends list. But the other ones are all people that
actually bought the game on steam. So with that in mind,
you have a 9,621 reviews that you and I both know, Grand
majority of players don't leave a review, it's like one in
20 in a very bombastic situation like this up to one
and 50 people leave that they saw the shitload of copies of this game is what it comes down
to that $50 a pop. So you're looking at even if you're doing, you know, 100,000 sales, even
if it's saying one in 10, which is unlikely, we're saying 100,000 sales, right? Your time
is doing that by 50. And then you're taking off steam's 30% cut. You're still looking
at $3.5 million. If you're talking of a burn rate of $850,000 a week, which is
what they're $800,000 a week, which is what they were claiming on Reddit. You're still
looking at almost four and a half weeks of pay. Why are the employees not being paid?
What's going on, man?
I mean, I could tell you, I have access to it. That's a great question. I'll try to
answer what I can from what I know. There's this website, which is a service that I
think is very credible and they have good math. It's called Gamalytic. Not promoting
them is something that I know about. It's used very consistently. I have an
account there, and I have numbers. So I can tell you from what I've seen,
I'm in a little bit of a fascist of creation. It says here, first release was
on Thursday, December 11th of 2025, which is what you said. The copy sold,
it's this average, and it could be like 20 to 30% off, but for games that sell a
lot, it's actually less, like, bit-lawed with numbers or higher numbers,
so it's kind of more accurate. But anyway, it says 237,000 copies sold,
is what they have recorded here. If that's the case, the price is $50, revenue is here.
This is revenue, post-steam cut is $9.9 million. If that's the case, let's say you lose taxes
to that, a good 25 to 30% goes to that, legal, maybe another 6%, and then everything
else is landing on the company, you're still up $5 to $6 million.
that didn't land somewhere that they could pay the $100,000 of the employees. These are
the numbers that are public, right? I wouldn't say that these are really, really public. These
are numbers that come from assumptions that are made by systems that tend to be not wrong.
So at least good enough information. Coming from publishing world for a while,
because I had a job doing that, we used game-alytic as well. So I am very well aware of this
service. It is right on the money for a grand majority of stuff. It's phenomenal. It's
within the range that makes sense when you look up games,
it's very rare that I will find a game
that has the wrong data through this website,
like exceptionally rare.
So, yeah, it's a good edge to get into games.
I'll tell you something here that is the scary thing.
I'm sure over there in Steam,
there's probably better numbers for average,
but in here it says average play time is 66.7 hours.
That number means that a lot of people
that tried the game for like a couple of minutes
and refunded it or they didn't like it or whatnot,
If that number is that high,
that means that people were really invested,
which means that there might be additional transactions
that I don't know about the store.
I don't know how that works.
I don't think Amaletic can cover transactions in game.
I don't know how it just works, I didn't play it, right?
But if that is the case,
then there's probably additional dollars
that are not represented here,
plus prior dollars that made it here before steam.
So if we were operating at a negative going into steam,
is the only way we could make $10 million almost clean
and not be able to pay people.
Once again, these are all super assumptions
based on data that we have.
But, you know, we can't,
if you are selling around 200,000 copies,
at least that's what it says here,
at $50 a pop, it's very difficult for me to believe
that you didn't have the ability to cover
your people's money unless that money's going,
or it was already committed, which once again,
if that was the case, you just need to tell your people.
You just tell them, right?
That's what it is.
Yeah, that's freaking scary, man.
That's scary.
That's a lot of niche management to be,
imagine if you release a game,
you make $10 million here first month and you're down.
That's rough.
That's rough.
Yeah, it's wild.
It's completely wild actually.
my goodness, my goodness.
I'm looking some other stats here.
It's quite a lot.
So then, do you think, do you think,
like Stephen's not gonna come to like,
to talk about this to anybody?
He's not gonna start something.
I don't think so.
I think there's likely something else
that's gonna happen quite a bit.
There are likely gonna be a lot of people impersonating him
and then screen capping messages that he says
and it's gonna get named into the ground.
I know how the internet works now, right?
Like that's just how that's gonna go.
You guys are probably going to see a whole bunch of misinformation posts posed to
Steven saying outrageous things or all kinds of stuff.
The only thing you can actually do is go and look up his actual account on their
discord and you'll find he has not said a word since he posted this at all.
This is the last message that he posted.
I went and go look on the, on the discord itself.
So do be wary of any information that you see out there for that.
You're probably just going to see a bunch of bullshit.
And this is an on fire situation.
So it's just going to keep getting worse.
This is why I kept telling people, like, I don't really care about
stuff, we went to go look through things that could actually be cited through multiple sources
or things that we could see from other areas. Any of these ones that I saw, the ones that I
showed there were from people that were actually inside of those discords and posting those messages
and seeing them happen. So with that in mind, that's the only information that I wanted to put up,
you know, something we could confirm in some way. Have a check on this from Reddit. Who's this?
Good Lord, man.
Ashley creation is a scam. Here's some evidence. Yeah, see, here's the thing. This is just
like, Intrepid Studios is suspended by the Federal Trade Bureau. This is what they said
the FTB was a year ago. And they were saying that they were, you know, it's a secured party name.
They're just going back to the UCC shit. That's all it is. It's just more UCC shit.
It's the same stuff we're already going through. And I think that's important is all those are
super public documents. You can look them up yourself. And I implore you to do so. I think
that's important. Yeah, it's just so insane to my brain to see this happening, to see such a fumble,
but I'm the problem is that I'm trying to resolve whether it's a fumble or it's by design,
because you have you have a lot of people that are suddenly all part of the same kind of world
of scamming and same world of bullshit, same world of multi-level marketing, the stuff that we
saw there, and then suddenly all of them are involved in this all at the same time.
That's hard to resolve as a consumer.
It's hard to go like, yeah, that's probably just happenstance.
You know, like that's, that looks weird.
You know, not, not allegedly on that one.
That's not allegedly, they are involved.
They're on the UCC, right?
So that is, that is them putting down a legal claim
that is backed by, if you do this fraudulently,
it is a state felony in the state of California.
So they have done this.
We have seen this.
It is real.
So with that in mind, like,
how do you resolve that as a player?
Most people just go, it's a scam, right?
But I want to know deeper.
I want to know what the hell is going on there.
It's so disappointing overall.
And this is the reason that I always tell everyone,
you don't need a publisher.
You don't need an investor.
If you can get by without it, do it.
Because this shit didn't need to happen to this game, dude.
It didn't need to.
There were cool parts of Ashes
that actually were really goddamn fun.
That's why we played it for so long.
And then on the back end of it, this is how it dies.
What a shit death.
What a shit death.
I think I agree with you 100% that, you know,
I mean, I can't say that because I think I'll eat it.
A lot of people have a lot of faith in our Kickstarter.
It's my baby, so I can't not see it that way.
So in my mind is like, we're gonna frickin' fail.
So I still meet with publishers.
what Thor, I met with over 45 of them.
So I'm exhausted of talking to them.
At this point, I know that some of them don't mean well
and I know some of them mean well.
But the problem is when things like this happen,
it creates a divide between our universes
and it makes it worse for both sides
because the other side has to get more defensive
and say, well, now I need to bolt down things
because you're gonna rep pull me
and let's say the publisher side,
but then the developer side gets more aggressive
and say, no, now I need more money,
which, you know, because I need to protect myself
from not being able to pay my people and all that stuff.
And then we end up bloating the industry
and it makes it worse for everybody.
And who pays all of this drama
between like publishers and developers, the consumer.
Because the consumer is the one that has to pay,
you know, whatever, 50 bucks for an unfinished game
and then lose everything, right?
So my thing is two parts here, to your point before,
I see there's only two outcomes that I can understand.
One, this was deliberate, right?
And once again, these are all assumptions,
but this was completely derivative.
We knew about, let's say six months plus ago
that things were not going our way
and then we started going down a path of planning
to execute this in the most convenient way.
There's that way.
Do I believe that that's the case as immaterial?
We're not talking about what we believe or not.
We're just saying that that's a possibility, right?
I think it's fair.
Now, there's the other side that there was mismanagement,
but let me say, this is what I believe as an individual.
I believe that if there was mismanagement,
it was so far ago, it happened long ago.
And then we saw the end coming
and then we decided, let's plan for it.
Because this doesn't matter how you play this,
this looks pretty organized.
Like, you know, people thought about this,
you know, there's our good dates
and we could set this up this way,
which is not an unfair thing to do, right?
There's nothing wrong with not letting a business just die.
But the bigger fear that I have is that
if it is deliberate, then it's incredibly evil.
But if it's not deliberate,
then why didn't we tell anybody?
Why are people getting laid off, you know,
without a month's salary or whatever?
That's kind of what I mean.
Like that, no matter how you cut it,
there's some, I don't wanna say deliver it,
but there's some pre-preparation is the right word I would say.
There's some preparation that we can assume
just by looking at what we're presented.
And man, that just feels wrong
as to what I'm gonna use to be kind.
It feels wrong because there's just no way,
there's just no way that there's no way
that there's no, so some planning here, it's such.
There has to be.
And the reason why it really pisses me off is
I can't see Steven as anything but a liar in this situation.
The reason why I can't see him as anything but a liar
is because he sold us a game
throughout the entirety of this lifespan.
Said it many, many hundreds of times of,
there is no one I am beholden to, there is no board,
there is no, there's no investors, there's none of this.
And now we can see from the UCC filings
that yes, there were investors and they're coming to collect
and yes, there was a board from his own messages.
He has lied.
Yeah.
And that's it.
That is not even a,
I don't think there's any conjecture here.
I think that's a very first statement.
It just sounds,
it sounds kind of like a unkind, but who cares, right?
Yeah.
Not our problem here,
but it is the actual truth, right?
You said something and then it wasn't the case.
And once again, that's why I think
If you build your little platform
and you're the one standing on top of it
and you're saying, I'm gonna do this in a certain way,
you're saying that people hold me accountable to that
and in return, give me your trust and your money.
Well, then people are gonna hold you accountable to it
and here's the consequence.
So I don't know.
I think I'm happy to end this before I fight.
I wonder if there ends up being criminal action
for that though, because you're misleading
and not consumers, misleading consumers
is a very big deal.
That's like, you can't fuck around with that in the US.
like you can't fuck around with Europe,
very much so, very much so.
So by telling players that there is no board,
that there is no investors, that there is no oversight,
like it's me, we're doing this grassroots,
all that shit that he said.
And he's very on record saying it,
like pretty much everywhere, it's everywhere, right?
I'm wondering when does that get brought up as fraud?
Right, when does it get brought up as fraud?
When does it get brought up as misleading customer base?
because as a customer, I feel deeply misled and sirely so.
Because you have a dude that's been saying this
the whole time and then he exits while saying,
yeah, the board took the power away from me.
What board, right?
If it's all the time, there wasn't such a damn thing.
And that's, I feel misled as a consumer.
And I think that's the biggest thing that going forward,
that's where the legal side has to go,
which is to determine is this fraud to do such a thing?
And I hope that I get to know the answer, right?
Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. Where's the boy?
You know, I mean, I don't know if we'll ever get that answer. We might not.
You would hope that if they don't have money to pay for people,
they also don't have money to like keep the lawyers running the show for years
and delaying, you know, legal action. But oftentimes that ends up,
and I'm being the case, which is the surprise, you know,
for entities that you survived the test of time. But the way,
at least I think about it as the, and I'm looking at your chat a little bit, and I am seeing the
effect here, which is a really passionate and good thing to see, but I would like to caution us
a little bit. We cannot allow ourselves as a consumer to be taken to the, like, the way I'll
explain it in a better way. If the way I see it is there's something called, there's consequence
and there's threat. If you have a really, really big room, like a huge room, a room that you cannot
see the end of it, and it's dark, and you have a candle in your hand, right? And you are against a
corner. You feel the corner, you feel safe, and you can look forward, but you can never see the
other side of the room. You would imagine that there's someone far away from you that can see
the light, but you can't see them, right? That is the evil that we need to be worried
about. I know that sounds like a crazy conjecture, but I'll get there in a moment.
why am I saying that? If everyone in here and all of us are getting really passionate, are we
saying, oh, that's why I'll never support early access again. Well, that's why I'll never be part
of a Kickstarter again. Or if a game is self-funded, I'm not going to do it. What we're doing is we're
feeding into the distrust that leads to this happening. So I think it's my opinion, and
I would love to hear your thoughts.
But it's on us developers, it's not on the consumer.
The developers have to be more accountable.
We have to be more transparent and we have to set up systems for people to actually hold
us accountable, not in a self-glorifying way, but to actually show, hey, we said we were
going to do this, and it's not like six years down the road.
We're going to do stuff in like three month sprints or something like that.
I don't know.
To show that we're making the thing we're saying we're going to do and we
We can manage our business and we're doing well so that people can trust us and then
we can leverage the tools out there like crowdfunding and I don't know like investors or even like
just the time of people.
I don't know, mods that are helping you out or whatever we're doing.
We have to gain that trust.
But my current fear is that these problems, what happened with Mega Man, like what is
it?
Mighty number nine.
What's happening with this game?
making consumers walk away more and more in anger and say, well, I guess I can't trust
you. Well, what that means is that the person in the shadows that can see your little candle,
they're saying, easy, I want to keep you in that corner and I'll just feed you trifle-a
stuff every day. We don't want that either, right? So don't let somebody else tell
you what you can or can't purchase because somebody misused the resources that we
have available.
I think that's one of the biggest things that happened after No Man's Sky actually
is there was a lot of people that said do not pre-order games. I'll never
pray in a game ever in my life. I'll never do it in that shit because they lied so heavily
about the content launch and they did. And now they've kind of resolved that.
You know, they've shown the players, hey, they made it right. You know,
they did over many years of doing that. It is good now, though, but I'm talking
about the damage they did at the time. It created a wave of people that stopped
trusting Indy. It created a wave of people that didn't want to do early access or
or pre-orders or any of that,
created a wave of hate for developers
instead of just the hate for the studio that did it.
And I think that's a very important thing to understand
is not everything is a scam just because you don't like it.
That is important.
And in this case, I hope that it goes to legal proceedings.
I do because the direction that this has gone
is incredibly strange.
And there was so much promise in there
and it all fell apart probably in the last six months
just about that amount of time,
six to eight months somewhere there.
It sucks because we enjoyed it as a community.
It was a fun ass game and then seeing just this devolve is just wild.
It had a shitload of promise.
Even Adonis is here talking about it.
Yeah.
And a lot of you guys in the community played this with us and it was just
insane to see legitimately insane to see them go in this direction.
It's such a shit show.
We've talked about this for over 10 hours.
Yeah.
We've been talking about it for 12 hours now and I'm doing that on two
hours of sleep, mind you, after 36 hours of being away.
So, you know how mad I am.
know you want to stop but I mean it's it's it's a good thing for people to hear
I'm sure that there's people cycling like you know they're coming in they're
here 30 minutes so there's a lot of people that you know we've been here
for a long time but there's a lot of people getting informed but I think like
to that to your point that the main thing that I worry about well we got
ads but man this is such an interesting situation like I can't believe we're
here.
I can't. I think the one worry that I have is like, they were talking about we really
want to lose you as a content creator and all this stuff at the end. And it makes me
wonder is like, did they can it because the last straw was caught in like, I literally
said, I'm out, told everyone on stream why I was out. And then three days later, they
blow it up.
It's like, all right. Well, okay.
I doubt that it was a big blow, but in my mind, it had to be a lot more premeditation.
There's too much that I imagined was premeditated and at least triggered.
This happens, then this will happen, and this happens, and that will happen.
I think that that's probably how things played out.
I think there's a lot of premeditation.
Once again, that doesn't have to mean that it was an evil act,
but premeditation means planning and things
like social plans and we have a crisis control,
stuff like that.
Certain events trigger, and then companies
do certain actions back to back.
That's planning.
So that's how it feels to me.
There's some planning, but that doesn't mean it was within the plan.
But the two guys that were like,
You didn't shut down cause you quit, like be real dude.
Like I didn't say that.
What I was saying is it feels that way
because it's like so ridiculous how close that is.
Yeah, you're falling for rage bait
that you've imagined for yourself, calm yourself.
Like no, it's just weird feeling.
Cause like I literally sent this big passion thing
and they were like,
we don't want to lose you as a content creator.
This was the largest stream for the game,
like straight up.
And then three days later,
they blow the company up and I was like,
Jesus, the timing is wild, right?
So like, yeah, no, it's just not great, dude.
The whole thing is just not great.
What I don't know, and it's something
that I think it's a good thing to call out, is,
and I don't want to put, I feel gross saying the words
Expedition 33 by the side of this shit show.
But you have a game like Expedition 33
that we call, many people call indie, right?
Even though they had a publisher, right?
But whenever we use that word, indie, literally, would mean
independent.
I get that.
But the truth is, I don't think Ash is with an indie studio.
This is my opinion.
This is not probably factual.
I think if they were self-funded, then they are indie.
But to me, something that big, when it's that big, in my
definition of indie, I think you are no longer an indie.
I think there's a thing that has nothing to do with the
word that has to do with size and capacity and the ability to serve yourself and to be
economically viable.
But I think that's what I call Indy.
I understand that's not the perfect definition, but the reason why I'm bringing it up is
because we don't look at Expedition 33 the same light.
We don't look at studios that are trying to be more than Indy, like trying to be
big and say, you know what, we're going to take their flaw, what they did and their
mistake and we're going to apply it all in this categorically, not the case, right?
So there's a lot of studios out there, not necessarily mine.
Studios larger than mine, but smaller than, why are the name of the Ashes of Creation
studio is, there's studios in between that still need your help and your support.
But we probably will apply the same rules because we say, oh, well, these guys did
it, therefore these other guys could be affected by that.
So I guess what I'm trying to come is the same way that we look at
Exhibition 33, definitely not an Indie, and we call it Indie.
It's fair to look at Azure's creation that is technically Indie and
say you don't meet those conditions and you don't represent community
of developers that has this ideals, this conditions, this hopes or
this structure, that's my opinion. And I know it's not super fair and it's a little bit of what is it,
a self beneficial, but if I just don't feel, I should represent some of these.
I don't think I agree. And the reason why is in the, in the terms, indie,
double A and triple A come from the banking investment world. That's, that's what it is.
It's based on a chance of return on an investment and how risky the investment is.
With India means independent. Independent to me, Indie is independently funded.
Ashes was posed as an Indie game, meaning it was independently funded by Stephen.
We now know that's not true, but that's the way it was sold the entire time.
So I think that to me, that's kind of how I feel about it is it's about where does the money
come from and the reason why it's about where does money come from. If the money came from
outside the house, that means the control comes from outside the house too. Something
can't be indie if it's not independently funded. Someone else can hold the reins and change things.
So I think that's where I draw the line for it. It's not about a feel. It's about a business
transaction. Who holds the power? Who paid for the game, really? Fair, fair, fair. But I think
you would concede that a self-funded multi-million dollar project is, we could call it indie,
right? But it's not indie in the same way, you know, as like, I don't know, like, you know,
super adventures in the super venture. Yeah, or, or like silk song. Yeah. So exactly. So I mean,
that whatever we call those distances, I think there's a box where you have what people idolize
as indie I'm using the word idolize very broadly, people respect, I would say a lot of people
respect like, you know, solo devs and in a small teams and stuff like that people respect that
a lot. But we sometimes apply the same rules to all of these. And that's where I'm hoping
that people won't do that this time around. Like, don't think that a company that is much
smaller and less capable of self-funding themselves as intrepid will fall to the same level of
character assassination and do what they're doing. This is, things get evil the more
money you have. And I'm not saying that small studios don't do evil shit, of course they
do, but just it's just important to be careful in my mind because if we if we start applying
the same rule just because they are quote unquote factually indeed then we get into
a situation where people would say well I will never play a early access game ever
again because ashes let me down. Just if you want to do that I think that's your
right and you should do that, but just know that there's like two different universes and
and it's dangerous to apply the rule both ways. That's my opinion.
I think there's a way to resolve this actually are our disagreement on this. And I think
it makes a lot of sense. I think there are two kinds of the word indie. You've got the
finance indie, which is independently funded, double A triple I, and you've got the feel
indie, which is indie or corporate. So when you're talking about it doesn't feel
Indie, I think you're saying it feels Corpo. It feels AAA. It feels corporate. It feels
like the clean room with gloves on kind of a thing. And it does. Ash is a creation very much
so has a corporate feel to especially in those responses that I got from Margaret. Ridiculous.
It's a feel side of the Indie scene. And I think this is where the problem is a lot of
times to me with Indie as a word is it's supposed to mean finance, but people use it as
as a feel, and feel is deeply subjective, right?
Very, very subjective, and it makes it really hard to parse.
For me, when I'm talking indie, I'm talking finance, man.
I'm like, did they fund it?
It's indie, cool, they like it.
Yeah, yeah.
For me, and I know I'm wrong,
so I need better words for this, I accept.
I don't think it's wrong.
I don't think it's wrong.
I think it's just, it's a feeling-based thing, right?
And I'm more of a thing.
I would have called Intrepid a double A studio.
I know that that's not true.
I know that for a fact, it's definitely not true.
But for me, they're not indie because of the conditions
that I perceive an indie.
But in my view, I'm wrong and you're right.
The way that I'm thinking about it more from utilization
in terms of what people, if I go to someone right now
and I tell them a grilled cheese sandwich,
they imagine this grilled cheese sandwich immediately.
It doesn't matter if I imagine it with like a brioche bone
or a square bread.
However, I imagine it's kind of immaterial
is what they imagined.
So in my mind, when I tell somebody indie,
I don't think they think about ashes of creation.
That's all I'm saying.
It's really not important how I make that video.
They think pixel art most of them.
Yeah, but the line between indie and AA
is where I think, which I call indie plus
is the space that I think you see.
You're thinking high finance, Indies, right?
I wouldn't even say high finance.
I'm saying high quality indie work
that it's less about like,
it's less about we're making a game for passion.
It's we're gonna make a business out of this game,
but we're definitely not double A.
Like we don't have the resources to be there,
but we are trying to make like a,
an actual operation out of this, right?
I think like, you know, games like.
So you're thinking more structure based.
Yeah. The structure of the company,
the direction of the company. That again, to me, that is a
school.
Yeah, this is not that I'm not even the right words for it.
That's okay.
In my mind, that's what I call Indie Plus, which is someone
that is definitely not double A, but they're definitely not
just Indie. However, like I think super adventure is Indie
100%. They are the epitome of Indie.
You know, they're Indie Indie. They're Indie Indie 100%.
They're great to love that shit.
I think shape protocol is in the plus we don't have the money to do you know we
don't have the money to do any of that but these we are going we're saying hey we want to be as close
to mega man meets blasphemous as possible we're challenging some area of the of the of the
genre that is like more defining a requires resources we just don't have them right yeah
and the reason why I'm making that call is because I don't think ashes
was anywhere in those two categories.
They were like way higher,
like way, way higher in that spectrum,
in their goals and in their expectation of revenue
and in their cost and all of that.
But I think I have completely wrong words for it,
but the field to me is they were too far
from the indie spirit,
but they were selling us that they were indies.
They were selling us that they were indies.
They were selling us like we're self-funded
and we're gonna do this our way
and we're gonna do it right
and all that stuff, that's what Indies talk.
Like that's how they speak.
But whenever you're sending me like a message
that is like five paragraphs long
that feels like you ran it 10 times through chat GPT,
then I don't think you're an Indie anymore.
There's a little bit of heart that you don't have.
And I know that that's like a field thing for sure,
but I see that as a metric
that people should at least care about
whenever they decide if ashes should affect
their behaviors moving forward.
Like should I treat everyone with that same rule?
Is what I worry about.
Does that make sense?
Like should people be constantly thinking about,
oh, you know, like this game let me down in early access.
Or like-
Do you want to be real?
People will do that in general.
Human beings are pattern-seeking.
That's how we work, isn't it?
That's just it.
We're pattern-seeking as an animal.
That's why you fall into conspiracy theories.
That's why we look through all this information.
That's why we see the negative in this
because we're pissed off and we're looking at a bunch of data and that data
lines up in a really shitty way. It doesn't mean it's actually that way,
but it looks shitty because we're mad right now and all the data looks that
way because we're finding patterns that are shitty, right? It's, yeah,
you're noticing the shit behavior.
And I think that's the thing is that kept us alive as a species. Yeah,
it did. It kept us alive for a really long time.
That pattern recognition kept you from dying in the woods, right?
But now when we're in an environment like this,
It's going to make you go, why don't find games?
You know, I can't trust developers anymore.
Cause that one time that developer shit on me, right?
And he stole all my money.
Now I don't trust any devs.
You do have to temper that.
And I agree with you entirely.
And we have seen that happen in the past
where suddenly all devs are just treated like shit
because one dev actually could jackass.
In this case, I feel pretty solid the fact
that I feel like Stephen's acted like a jackass here.
Cause this is, this is, you know,
the idea of a board there doesn't actually, you know,
then we were never told there was a board before that.
So like it is easy to fall under that trap,
but I want you to temper it in this way.
This statement from him saying that there's a board
suddenly, that's what I'm mad about.
I'm not mad at all developers.
I'm not mad at all dev teams.
I'm not mad at India, not mad at AAA.
I'm not even mad at corporate, even though I hate corporate.
I'm mad at Steven.
And I'm mad at Steven for misleading me
as a customer for his game.
That's who I'm mad at.
And I'm mad at Margaret because instead of having a human response to the horrible
things that are being said in game,
she gave a dry corporate response to me,
which is not what you would expect after years of interaction.
Those two people disappointed me as a person and that's it.
And now I want to find answers.
So I went through all of this today to discover as much information as
possible to see what we could prove and what we couldn't prove.
And hopefully find out maybe one day legal shit will happen. And that's it. And like I
Mean and I think it's fair that you are hoping that somebody will
First fact check
Second like prove us right or wrong, right? Yeah, we are hoping for somebody to take this and kind of go wild
Right and say a we found some information take it and keep going right and let's find the answers
consumers. So I think there's something beautiful about that, right? We are doing the research
that we can with the information that we have, but we are making judgments as consumers,
which we have all the right to do, but there is definitely much more due diligence that
will come, and then we are hoping that it will turn for the better. I understand that
consumers are in pain right now. I am more worried immediately for the dev team, because
they have no recourse immediately. So I'm really concerned for them, but it's not
pain, right? Yeah, they're very, very, and there's, there's nothing anyone can do for
them. And dude, like you and I both know no one's getting jobs in this economy and games.
That shit is hard, man. We have people in the community that have been out of a
job for like four years and haven't been able to find a damn thing. We have people
that are entering through like the tech industry, this can't find shit, because it's
the worst time in games and tech that I've ever seen for a job right now.
And you've got 250 people out of a job suddenly all at once.
And then being told they're also not getting this paycheck, like, damn man,
like that's just, that's not only was it preventable, no matter what, right?
Because once again, there's burn rates, but the second part is, oh man,
this is gonna, I don't want to crash out again, but it's crashing.
My thing is I wish, man.
I really wish Thor.
I sometimes do certain things with dreams in the back of my head of like needless vengeance.
I don't know why it gives me so much joy.
I hope that one of those devs reaches out in that Twitter thing.
I hope that I hire them, and I hope that we make it, and I hope that we can slap
it in the fricking faces and say, see, this is the talent that you let go.
Like Palpatine said, you shall be punished for your lack of vision.
You shall be.
I'm really glad that you're becoming Palpatine.
That's a good-
Oh man, no, I didn't mean it that way.
Don't call it me, that sucks.
No, but it's, oh man, it's...
Because I've been in the side,
I told you when we did in December,
I was laid off from my job,
that I was number one rated in my entire department.
I have more products to me than anyone else,
but because I made more money,
and that's something that's very common.
I don't want anyone to think that's evil.
That's very common, whenever you do layoffs,
Sometimes one of the processes is you take people from the higher earners in order to
be able to sustain more people and have more time.
That's not uncommon and that's not actually unfair.
It just really sucks.
It just really sucks.
But when I was let go, it was dehumanizing.
It's the only other word.
I've only felt like that three times in my life.
One, when I was assaulted at gunpoint.
Second, when they cut my hair in boot camp.
And third, when I was let off.
Those are the three times in my life I've ever felt totally dehumanized, like I have
zero value at that point I have no value.
And that was the worst, well of course I'll say the worst, but the being in the situation,
when they cut your hair in boot camp, it is with the intention.
It is very, I mean, many people I'm sure have been in the military, but it is with
that idea of we are all the same.
You are part of, there's no you anymore, right?
And you lose that you, and you are us now.
That is stuff that people don't like, I guess, but what?
It is something that is intentionally dehumanizing,
even though it is not evil.
It is meant to bring people together,
but it's a very difficult thing to do.
They're doing it by the way,
by making you look into the mirror.
So you have to keep your eyes open,
they're doing it while you're looking in the mirror.
It's a very dehumanizing experience.
But whenever you are laid off, and I'm sure many people here have felt it, because you
know, this industry has laid off more people in the last two years than it has hired in
last 10.
So it's a very scary thing.
When people get laid off, there is nothing you can tell them that doesn't make them think,
what did I do wrong?
Where are you?
It's not even just...
It's not even just...
There's actually two sides of it.
I've been through a bunch of laughs, and I've, you know, there's two sides.
The people who get let go feel like they're not valuable anymore.
They feel like they're worthless.
They feel like they, you know, they let everyone down
or they, you know, no one's ever gonna hire them again,
because especially here in the United States,
we tie jobs to our identity.
We are that job.
We don't just do the job to get paid.
We are that job.
That is our status.
That is who we are as a person in some ways.
So that's a big deal.
And then the other side of it is the people
who get left behind, the ones who do not get fired.
And they also have the same kind of pain.
they're like, why didn't I get let go?
What the hell did I do that was different?
Did they even know what I do?
Was it just straws?
What the hell happened?
And I remember the first time I went through a layoff
and the way that they did it
was we were walking into the building.
This is so fucked up actually.
This is like a grim ass story.
But we were walking into the building
and there's like a set of doors right here.
There's the front doors right here.
And there's kind of corridors going off
this way and that way from this, right?
And I walk into the front doors
and all our supervisors are standing up here.
And they were directing people either this way
or that way, down the quarters.
If you went this way, you were going to HR
and you were fired.
If you were this way, you were going to your desk.
You had to look back around and go to your desk.
They did this all morning.
That's how everybody was fired.
That's the way it was handled.
It was just efficient, right?
Problem, there was door in the back of the building
that a lot of people used to enter.
some of the people who were meant to go to HR to get fired,
made it to their desks through that
and had to go be collected.
So you get the first wave of, oh my God,
we're all like, what the hell's going on?
And then the second wave of this shit.
When we get to our desk, they told us like,
hey, you guys are gonna be expected to work like a full day.
And I was like, no, I ain't, I got up and left.
And so everybody, let's do, we just got out of there.
Cause like, there's no, you just can't.
Like the morale is so low
For the people that are left behind on that,
we just left for the day.
We just came back to work the next day
because it was like, you just fired half our team.
Those are people I've been working with for years.
They're gone now.
Like we can't function for a day.
Like what have you, like what are you, are you kidding me?
So like, for the people who do get fired, it's horrible.
And for the people that don't get fired,
it's also horrible.
Nobody survives that shit without damage, dude.
That shit sucks.
It's awful.
So like, I get it.
It's awful in a horrific way
because it affects people.
in so many ways that people don't think about like for example,
I still think about that shit dude. That should suck.
I mean, it's a little bit of a, I mean, I know it's a big word and I don't want to use it lightly,
but it's kind of traumatizing because it's very difficult to let go of it.
Like it takes a toll on your, on your, you know, it's not like you're not going to,
to, you know, get over it, right? At some point, you're going to get over it,
but you're not really getting over it. You're processing it and accepting
that there was nothing you could do.
The biggest danger that I saw through the full process
that it was kind of crazy is when the whole layoff thing
happened on the last company that I was, like I said,
I was let go as the senior most person in the entire team.
I was the only person that go of a 15 person team
that was running all products for the entire US.
I ran out of billions of dollars in product.
When I was let go, I said to myself, for a moment, of course,
before it hits you, you go like, you know what?
This is the best thing that'll ever happen to me.
You say this stuff to yourself like, ah, you know, be fine.
When you come to realize what, before you realize what it
does to you, you realize what it's going to do to everyone
else.
Does other 14 people have to take all of my work?
And they don't get a single cent more.
And you think, well, you know, it's not a big deal,
right?
You just split it.
No, no, no, no.
They don't hire someone else.
They don't do what they're laying you off.
So they're killing your position.
And I had so much work that now gets to be landed
on mothers that have three children.
And or, I don't know, people that have never,
that have decent careers maybe,
now they're getting a product they don't know
and they need to master it in two months.
Not only that, it's also half work too.
Like one of the problems we had in that is you have,
you have like a bunch of pods of teams
and maybe there's six people on each team
and maybe three of those people get fired from this one
but maybe everyone got fired from this one.
We were finding work for like eight months, dude.
Like literally it was like eight months of like,
hey, yo, there's a task in here
that was assigned to this team
and the whole team got wiped out and we just found it.
Like, because everything gets just,
you have a fully working machine
where every component of that is a person,
every gear and cog is a person
and suddenly whole parts of that machine are gone.
And now you're just finding shit like the whole, the whole machine is broken
for ages afterwards as you're trying to recover that shit.
That doesn't make any sense.
Part of that brokenness is intentional.
And I'm not going to, I cannot say this for sure.
Cause I don't want to, you know, uh, say that for sure.
But I'll tell you this, whenever you're laid off, many companies at the
level that I was working on, they give you what's called severance.
They give you, they pay you an amount of your salary over time.
And they give you some benefits, but pretty much, you know, you can fight
I did of course but not everybody has my character. I'm ex-military. I can sit there and fight you to death to make it fair
But there are people that you know
They don't have that personality and they probably didn't fight it
So they didn't get us, you know the the benefits that they needed on this and that yeah
Let's say, you know, let's say you you do get just enough and you leave right?
So Thor stays Kendall left Kendall was let go, but you know what happens and I know it's gonna sound evil
Many of you have never thought about this. This is where I'm gonna make you hate companies even more
They already knew that they want to let go of Thor, but they don't want to pay Thor severance.
So what they're going to do is they're going to let go of Kendall because they know Kendall will probably not fight it.
They'll give him a severance that's very small, and then they'll overwork Thor and they will evaluate him.
Hey, here's the, you know, slowly, like here's the, you know, all the work and then I'll do an evaluation every month
and I'll build a papal trail and then I'll fire Thor without giving him anything because I could lower his performance forcefully
In the state that I was in when I when I went through a situation like that
They had to pay me out. So what their strategy was for me was even more interesting
I had a position and they wanted to put me in another position another role and they wouldn't tell me to pay for that role
They wouldn't tell me it. They're like, hey, would you do this at the role?
We're gonna move you over to that. You're gonna be doing this at the work now
They wouldn't tell me what it was and it was coming up to the day where they wanted to move me over to other team and do other work
For security related stuff. They wouldn't tell me what it was
So I finally hit up my buddy over at payroll me like hey, man
What's the pay band for this this job role and it was like 25 percent below what I was currently being paid
They were trying to get me to move over that so all my payable hours for all my my like
You know vacation days and shit would have been paid out at that if I left I left before they made the transition
They'd be pay me out at my full
Yeah, crazy man, and the problem is, all of this that we're talking about, remember that
whenever you have public companies, they do earnings calls every so often.
So they have to project all of it.
They have factories and people that are incredibly intelligent, far more than you might think.
So whenever they do the math for all of this, that they get close, they knew that
they were going to do it.
say, we're going to lay off 20% of our force, and then we're going to lose another 15%.
It's all measured in a way, thought out, planned, and it's to me, it is the evilest thing, and
that's why I get so angry.
The reason I joined this call is exactly for that, because the moment that you say lay
off, I react, because I know that lay off only happens with mismanagement or acts
of God, but we didn't see anything like, you know, the whole thing with like AI and Google
like that was like what yesterday or a couple of days ago, now they didn't affect them. So
if you are here and this is happening to you, I can't give you any advice, but I'm just
saying there's a lot that you could do. Make sure you educate yourself on what you can
do in order to manage that process. Well, I think the only other time layoffs happen
or extreme market shift when you say acts of God, like if there's an extreme market
We're suddenly like, like, if you guys are making it, you know, an MMO and
suddenly the player base drops by 98% in a day, right?
Like that's, you're going to do layoffs, right?
It's like, there's, there are limits to that.
And that's, that's one of the things is we were talking about this
earlier today is you, the way that I always manage that is you operate
under a budget where if you lost 70% of your income today, you
could still keep everyone's jobs.
Like that's it.
You know, like that's, that's how I feel about that is if you
lose 70%, you've got 30% left over.
Can you do that without bleeding?
And and realistically, can you do without bleeding is the whole idea and that's the idea of not each you if you put yourself under constraints like that
You try to do everything super lean
So even if you do get punched in the face you survive, you know, I could tell you something
I used to and I agree with you a thousand percent. Yeah, I want to give people
One one step further whenever whenever Thoron I say mismanagement
outside of acts of God, right?
I want you guys to hear this and take me very seriously in this one moment. I'll be quick. I went through COVID as a senior director of whatever some consumer insights in a life insurance company. Let me say that really closely.
in my life insurance company.
We didn't let go of a single person.
Yeah. Not a single person.
So there are people that are masterfully good
at their freaking jobs
and they did not let go of anybody.
We were in COVID in a life insurance company.
That's the job that I had at that moment.
So whenever we're doing that,
we didn't let go of anybody.
So they figured that out.
So then eventually, you know, I left that.
That's not, that wasn't for me, but you know, it was my first job in the U.S. you know, I was, you know, you take, you take what you get and from there you go, but it's something that I will never forget the managers, the people that work that those jobs, the actual operating expertise there was incredible.
These people were just crazy good at their job.
So there is the opposite to what we're saying here.
There are people that are so good at their job that they can plan ahead and even through a COVID,
they can figure out a way to keep their workforce, treat them with dignity, protect them.
Like it was, I will never forget the impressive, I don't know, the mastery
in management that I saw there.
So I had nothing, forget about LaVitcher.
I know some of you really don't like that, but that doesn't matter. We're talking about
good managers. That's what we're talking about. And then you have other places that, you know,
there's three points of reduction in the, you know, the S&P 500 and they lay off half
their stuff. So there is an amount of mastery, interest of management and ability that
we cannot, we shouldn't forget about.
We got to add Sterna.
You know, it's, yeah.
That's kind of crazy, Thor.
I think I heard something like your story before
that you had mentioned in the stream, but that's crazy.
That's just so insane.
That's why I don't know.
I mean, you guys noticed, right?
What was happening that people noticed?
No, yeah, we knew.
And like that was the thing is that's why I hate corporate.
It's why when I left, I was like, I'm just going into you, man.
I'm going to save up as much money as I possibly can
and get the hell out and do something I'm passionate about.
And it was funny was I'm either going to open a game studio
Or I'm going to open a bakery.
Kind of a funny, like kind of split there, but man, and like I had all these
dreams and aspirations like one day when I'm the boss,
I'm going to pay all my people and have benefits for everyone.
There's going to be a lot of shit.
And now I get to do that.
You guys in the community have afforded me the opportunity to be able to do
that, to achieve that kind of working environment that I wish I had when
I was dealing with that shit in corporate, because corporate is ass.
It is ass and you can do it better.
It's harder, but you can.
and you guys have allowed me to do that.
So thank you.
Yeah, I'm, it's crazy for, for people that are not,
I mean, corporate just is such a,
it has an allure that is difficult to resist, right?
And it's not because of me.
Yeah, I mean, it's, for example, for me,
I'm in a situation now, yeah, I run my studio,
but everything is dead, right?
I'm paying everything, you know,
We don't have health insurance.
We don't have anything, right?
So everything that we're doing,
we're doing it out of our own pocket.
And at some point, we can't keep doing it.
So I do understand the allure of like,
you have a nine to five and it's a good job.
And you have benefits and you have this and you have that.
And it's like a curtain of safety that comes with that.
And I think like there's nothing wrong
with needing that and wanting that.
The problem is how they take advantage of that, right?
That's what is really ugly, right?
The advantage that a company will take out of your necessity
for those things, like that security and that stability.
So yeah, there's an amount of,
there's no amount of loyalty that you owe to a corporation.
No, there's not.
And I hope that the devs from Azure Creation
are hearing that and they take a moment to then, you know, think about what they need to
do for themselves and, you know, hopefully protect themselves.
It's one of the things that I try to tell the community all the time is you are not your
job as much as our society really, really pushes you to feel that your entire personality
is based on your job, your self-worth is based on your job.
Your job is there to pay your bills.
It is not your personality.
It is not who you are.
It's what you do.
And it's, you do it so you can get money to pay your bills.
that happens outside of that is who you are as a person. What you do at that job for
you to be able to get money is not right. Yeah, you're not, you're not your khakis.
Exactly, man. And I think that's something that's super important that people forget in
the shit like that. And you realize it real quickly inside of a layoff situation. It's
probably why I feel the way that I do because being through that shit, it's like, I don't
give a shit about the corporate now. And then I don't know the way that I feel
better is that you can't hate Arasaka enough, dude. Like that's, that's just how that shit goes.
It's like it's, it drains the hell out of people and it doesn't only for, you know,
profit margin for that in a way that is not, it's not human, right? And it drives people to do
things that are not human. It's, it's very cold calculated and nothing else matters. And I
understand that that is required to run a very large scale business. But I also think that
you can be effective inside of the gaming space or any other creative space with a small
team where you don't have to act that way. And I think the biggest shame is when you have somebody
that has dreams and aspirations of creating an environment like that and they don't really understand
the beast that they're creating. They don't understand the machine that they're building
and so they create a flawed machine that just treats people like shit and stuff like this happens.
So it's even there. And I'm sure you've seen this in the companies you've been in and this
is helpful to everybody because I see a lot of people talk about their managers and Chad and I
I love that. But I'll tell you this, this, this, I can't remember. You probably know this
because you, I don't know your brain memorizes way too much shit that I can't do.
But what's the name of the principle? Is it the data principle or whatever that says like
people promote to the highest level of incompetence?
What is the name of the principles? Are you talking about like core principles for
like human interaction?
Peter's principle. I think that's what it is. I think that's what it is. So it's
just a, it's a saying that it says that people promote to their highest level of
incompetence. Yeah, there we go. Until they reach their highest level of competence.
Okay. Yeah. So I'll give you an example, right? You have a person, uh,
you have a mechanic, right? You're really, really good mechanic. Actually,
let's make it deaf because we have devs here.
So you have a dev that is really good and they know everything that needs to
know about every engine there is to get in there.
It's just so great that people say, okay, well you're,
you're the best dev we have, now you're a lead dev.
They're like, great.
And then who's below you, a bunch of devs?
They're, okay, I get it.
And then you teach them a little bit of what you do,
when it's really awesome, right?
And you're still kind of involved with that.
And then eventually you go from lead dev to the next job.
The next job is managing the lead devs.
Every time you're being separated more
from the thing that you're actually good at,
so you're promoting into incompetence, right?
You're going from what you're competent at
to things that you're actually not good at.
That doesn't mean you won't be like,
but that was kind of luck.
I have an example of that.
I could be lucky enough.
I have a really good example of that actually.
So one of the things that we saw before
that I saw in AAA was,
I think Amazon actually did this really well.
The idea behind this, if people understand,
is people being promoted based on their success
in a current job,
not their potential for the one they're being promoted to.
So there was a problem in QA that I saw quite a lot.
And it's pervasive throughout the industry,
where you can kind of go QA1, QA2,
but then you reach this kind of like impasse
where you're like, well, where do you go now?
Well, you become a producer or you become a manager.
These are very different roles than QA.
What happens to the guy that's just really good
at making and executing on test plans?
What if he's not good at managing people?
What if he's not production, right?
So like this created a really weird thing
is like you have this dude that's really
God damn good at doing this job,
but now he has no career goal, no career aspirations.
And you're judging him for potential for the next one,
but you're basically saying,
well, you're really good at this job,
so we want to promote you,
but we're going to promote you to two roles
that have nothing to do with what you're good at.
That shit's dumb.
That's really dumb.
So at Amazon, and I was very surprised by this,
at Amazon Game Studios,
they did this right for their entire
like software development, everything.
This basically went off into the sun.
Even for quality assurance.
They had quality assurance people
who were making like half a million dollars a year.
going all the way up to like the highest level of QA,
that guy wasn't turning into a manager.
He wasn't turning into a production.
He was just the man who tests things
and knows so much about testing
that he could basically touch whatever software
you're doing and be like, I can feel the bugs.
Like it was that dude, he was the one, right?
So like, I think this is a better structure
where you have that dude being promoted
within the role for the thing that he's good at
instead of being like, well, for you to succeed now,
for you to go up to the next run,
you gotta become a manager.
Like that's not realistic.
So I understand what you're talking about.
I didn't know it was called the Peter principle,
but I've seen this in practice
and I've seen it damaged careers because it makes no sense.
If you go to a guy and you're like, oh yeah,
you're only way forward now is to go be a manager.
Dude, people are gonna crash out of that.
Like managing people sucks for a lot of people.
It's not fun.
It's very dangerous because it's the idea
that the upward movement is hierarchical only.
hierarchical only. So there's only a line towards success, more and more success,
the more people underneath you. So it's like a sort of pyramids setup, which in
companies that do it really, really well, it kind of what you're saying happens
in a little weird way, which is called individual contributors. So you can
end up becoming like a dev that you keep promoting, but you're always a dev.
You're just a masterful dev, you know, excellent dev, whatever, and they call them, you know,
principal, lead, they just become more and more masterful at what they're doing.
They just don't end up managing people because it's not like they're going to be incompetent
on that, but they're definitely not proven to be competent at that.
So where I'm going with that is that a lot of people that we're talking here about
their managers have the conversation, sometimes that's a great conversation to have.
When you ask them about your craft, and they might light up, and they might know everything
there is to know about your craft, and then you know that maybe you don't like them as
much as their manager because they are excellent at your job.
But now they're being told they can't do your job, right?
So that's someone that, how you help yourself in that way, it's called leading upwards.
So you help them give you what they can give you, but then you also tell them
about your needs.
The biggest problem that I see is that people want a manager
that is a great manager,
but that manager came from their team.
So therefore that manager wasn't trained to be a manager.
There will never be a good manager unless you make them
a good manager.
It's kind of on you because they don't know what you need
and they'll say like, I'm a mechanic.
You need to know how to fix a car.
I'll teach you how to fix a car.
And you'll be like, I know how to fix a car.
What I need is for you to tell me
about my retirement package.
Like, how am I putting enough into my 401k
and be like a carburetor?
like radiator, so these are the things
that you have to find a way to lead yourself into success.
But in games, it's horrific.
Because in the space of games, companies
don't normally have successful games.
It's very, very rare.
Unless you're working on AAA, right?
So you're working on a smaller game company,
you just don't have somebody that
has done what you want to do with incredible success.
So you have to be very proactive and very aggressive.
I wouldn't say aggressive, that's the right word.
Proactive is the better word.
You have to be very proactive in the gaming space if you want to have a career here
because nobody's going to be able to quote unquote lead you
without teaching you technical skills,
but also maybe letting you down on the personal growth space
stuff that you want from a manager. It's just not normal.
Yep. And if you find one, pressure them buy them dinner, you know, be nice to them.
The best managers I've ever had and the ones that I learned the most from for
managing other people are the managers that acted like a tank in an AMMO.
They're ones that basically their job, the worst managers they ever had is
a manager that's over devs or over QA or anything like that.
But the manager was like, I'm going to give you hints on how to do your job.
That's the worst one. You don't need a manager that does that.
You need a manager that is the tank.
They get rid of all the shit that's in your way.
They go, what do you need?
We're going to make sure that the team gets that thing, whatever it is.
And I think the best managers and producers have ever seen is if they
don't have anything to tank, instead of trying to do your job for you or
give you hints on how to do your job for you, they just disappear for a
moment and then somehow they come back and everyone has donuts.
They're like, hey, everything's out of the way.
All the roadblockers are gone.
Have some donuts.
And it's like, those are probably the best managers I've ever seen.
They're support classes, man.
They're the best.
It's the best team managers I've ever had in my life.
And it's just support class the whole time.
I think that is the, and that's, that's why I'm saying this is completely
opposed to the role that you'll get if say you're a dev and your only path
forward, instead of to become more dev is eventually that you have to become
a manager of devs.
It's a very different role.
You're not a tank.
You're DPS.
Doesn't work very well.
And I think, yeah, let the DPS, DPS, man, let the techs take.
You wouldn't, wouldn't you also say that the problem is that when you, and I'm sure most
people here want to make games, I imagine, I like the idea of making games.
Whenever you take that, you are a freaking multi-class, freaking, you know, you have
to level up really quickly and you're like, you're a warrior, bard, freaking, you
you know, Sorcerer, you're everything at the same time.
And you have to learn to switch incredibly quickly.
Because, you know, you're playing every class
in Barlow's Gate at the same time.
If you cannot manage that, then the difficulty-
Hold up one sec.
So Solo over on YouTube side,
I was never paid by Intrepid,
not even a single set, not one.
I just liked the game to let you know.
I thought it was quite good.
And Steven sold us a story that he had personally bankrolled all of it and that there was no board of directors. There was no oversight. There was nothing like that.
So I know, I know you're probably coming in just to meme that shit, but no, I never got a dime dude. In fact, I don't believe any content creator did ever.
So never sponsored nothing like that. Not at all. So to be clear to you. No.
If it's a joke, be careful with stuff like that because you might not mean it is a bad
thing, but you know, these are the kind of stuff that people take and kind of run with.
So you know, it's funny in a way.
I got it, but you know, just be careful, you know, people, you know, it's not a
good thing to do to anybody.
I got one thing from them.
I got a bill for $375 when I bought it in 2020.
And wait, one other thing actually.
So a second thing, even though I hate gambling and I tell everyone I don't like
gambling.
Even Sharif sent me a poker set once to thank me because we were clearing up misinformation
about the game.
There you go.
Wow, that's a really weird gift to give a guy that doesn't like gambling, but thanks man.
Like, cool.
Very cool.
Great.
That's crazy.
It's kind of like, what is it, it's kind of like you just love the game, right?
No, I just love the game.
How random would that be?
The reason why I created this love of game right the reason why is because I came from Eve online then I played even line for 15 years
Super into the game. I love social sandboxes
They're my favorite genre of game and I left Eve because it has paid a win in corruption from the developers
And if those those people in the audience that don't understand corruption from the devs
There's been a number of cases of this over the year
But like one of them a big one was tier 2 BPO's in Eve online
You can get tier 1 BPO's which are like recipes, right?
And then you have to go through a process of crafting to be able to make a Tier 2 BPC,
which is a recipe you can only run a limited number of times for a Tech 2 item.
Tier 2 BPO's don't exist, but the devs made a number of them and handed them out to their
friends around the game to give them permanent advantage, and they never took them away.
This was a massive scandal at the time.
And to this day, they still have that, right?
They still have that exact same thing.
To this day, right?
And I think that that is a very good example of why I lost faith and Eve online and why
I wanted something to not have that kind of corruption, not have pay to win, not have
a little bullshit that came with that and ashes was presenting that and then it turned
out that Steven Lodd, he lied.
And I think that is absolutely disappointing as shit like insanely so, uh, Jaden, if
you have a claim, make the claim, don't just make vague posts, but this is in Twitter.
Anyway,
a rage bait for sure. I saw that one. I guess my thing here is, and I want to ask a hypothetical
because I think it's valuable, but you don't have to answer this one. But what would make this right?
Understanding that the answer is nothing, let's dream a little. Like if there was some sort of
course correction, understanding that the game is dead, all that, we get that, right?
What would at least make you a little bit more what would make this slightly better as you know,
maybe like, you know, Stephen shows up and like explains everything or you know,
there's legal action or is there some recourse that you feel like the very least like puts a
ball on the story and kind of closes it with with some dignity. Yeah, I think I think we need
to get the resolution of who owns the rights to the game. I think once I have that I'm
I'm cool to walk away, I don't give a shit, right?
Like I'm mad about it.
I spent the last five years enjoying this game
and like talking to people about it
and like telling people about the game
and like showing stuff off, like watching development.
I spent the last five years being heavily critical
of the game as well, like giving feedback
and being pissed off about shit,
even quitting for a while and all that kind of stuff.
I don't think there's a path forward for it structurally
because of the way that they've designed it
has just a ton of bugs that otherwise wouldn't exist
in the other development environment.
I don't know why they've built it
in the way that they have
and I've given that feedback before.
I don't think there's a, I just don't think there's a path forward for that.
So the only thing that I would need is my resolution is what the hell that money
would go. Why aren't you paying the, the employees, right?
Once I find out that, once we find out who this, you know,
lean is from that's like tied up with all of these like weird, you know,
MLM shit. Like once we find out all that stuff, I'll be like, cool.
Now I understand the story and it's gone.
I could file it away in a box and walk away, you know,
but for me today is, is just that discovery phase.
And that's why I had to sit down and do that all day today.
Cause it's just like, what the shit, man?
Because for the last five years,
we've been under this entire assumption.
Stephen's been feeding us this narrative
that there is no person that he is beholden to.
There are no investors.
There's none of that.
But now there's a bunch of UCC lien claims
against the company for assets
that they are owed because they were investors.
And you have Stephen saying that he's been ousted
by a board that we've never known existed
because we've been told that there is no board.
There's nothing, there's no one above him.
So with this in mind, it's obviously a lie,
like we've been lied to and we can prove that we've been
lied to now, but to what extent and who are the investors?
Why do they invest?
What were the terms of the deal?
I'd love to know all of those things.
And I'm also well aware that we might not ever get the
answer to that story.
There may never be answers that come from this.
And I may just be bitter about it for a while and
move on to something else.
But I'll tell you one thing.
I think no matter what it is for me as an individual,
I'm going to be very much more scrutinizing of the financials of any company for a
game that I am interested in. If I am interested in any game in the future,
I'm going to go, okay, where'd the money come from? Who's investing?
Who are the people? Where did they get their money from?
And I'm just going to be really aggressive about that because I don't
want this shit to happen again. That's not fair to their players.
It's not fair to our community. It's not fair to me. Right?
Like that shit sucks.
And like the only way that I can combat that is instead of being a jaded,
angry old man is to do more investigation.
And that sucks, dude. I shouldn't have to do that. And I honestly hope that there's some kind of legal recourse against this bullshit in the first place, because I feel as a customer deeply misled about the structure of this team and the product overall, the game, because it was sold to us as something that was fully independent and without attachment from the outside.
And that was not the case. That was a lie. Yeah.
I feel, and I'm using that word kind of cautiously, but I'll say something that I'm not sure, I'm going to make an assumption real quick here.
I think that this, it sounds like it hurts, because there was some, there's some attachment and some love for the game.
I think it would hurt more if I didn't quit, like, literally three days ago.
Oh, shit. Okay. So there is like, it's more the context of how I played out.
Yeah, it's more, I'm just, I'm just irritated. I'm like, why are you still like, why are you
like this? Right? I literally quit the game fully three days ago because of their response
to me about moderating people in their video game that we're saying hate speech openly.
Just like wild shit all the time. And Margaret's response to that was, oh, we're not banning
people. We're just going to warn them and hope that they recover. And I'm like,
that's the stupidest thing you could possibly do. So like for me, I had already checked out.
I was like, okay, if that's your stance and you're not going to change it.
We've had a whole hour long conversation.
I'm going to uninstall the game right now and walk away.
And I did.
And then three days later, they blew the company up.
And now it's just like, Jesus man, like, could you just die quietly?
That's how I feel about it right now.
It's like, you couldn't just, you could have just died quietly.
Instead you had to do all this shit.
And suddenly there's all these investors that no one knew about.
Just like, God damn it, man.
Like, what a mess.
Like what did you just kick the beehive over in front of everyone?
It's just like, dude.
So now, now it's the whole day today.
We had to deal with this and like look through everything.
And like, I don't want to do that shit.
But also what the, what the hell, man?
Somebody's had to, right?
Yeah, we have to, because I mean, some people would take it as a yet another one.
Right. But not only that, like I was the largest streamer for this game
for the longest period of time.
I've been streaming and talking about this game since I got it in 2021.
right, since the moment I could stream it. It's been like years now, right? So, like, of course,
people are going to be like, what is your take on this? And of course, I'm going to give the take
on that because I have a lot of feelings about this because I've cared about the game for ages.
And one of the biggest things for me is like sitting down and talking to people about it
and being like, yeah, maybe you shouldn't buy this game. And I've been as as honest as I
feel that I could be the whole time of just like, Hey, man, do you want to play a game
that's in a broken state? Do you want to have your character wiped? Are you even ended,
you know, social sandboxes, this might not be for you. And even now, I know there are
people that feel like, oh, I only bought it because Pirate Software played it. That blows,
dude. That's super success. Nothing can be done. Nothing. Yeah, there's nothing I can do about
that. It's just, you know, it's a, you know, you're going to play the game that you like
and people are going to see it and they're going to want to play it. And they're going to want to
play it. And it just, it pisses me off because you have this dude that lied
through his teeth about investment and lied through his teeth about there being no one above him and
no one's beholden and he's not beholden to anyone he lied straight up lied and now you've got a you
know me in our community and you have everyone in the community that's playing it because they're
like oh man Thor's playing this and Steven's saying these things and it seems legit and then
we all just got lied to man like that blows ass that's a shit feel you know and like I wish it
it played out a different way but it didn't and now what do we do with it get mad for a
a couple of days, hopefully play a game that isn't a shit show. That's pretty much all we
can do. Yeah. And like I said, now you're going to be more cautious and be more. Yeah,
I mean, like, you know, looking at looking at things that you wouldn't normally look.
So I mean, that's just, yeah, I'm going to be with you. I had no idea what UCC was
before this. I had no idea how leans work inside of business. I've got a small grasp
of understanding for this. And now I know that if we have a business in the future
that is like a game or anything like that.
I can go look up the UCC system for their state.
I can see if they have any lanes on their company.
I can see if they have any debtors, any owes,
any of that stuff,
and I can make a more informed decision
about should I actually get involved with this game or not.
I didn't know I had that before.
I didn't know I had those resources.
And that's empowering, but man, does it piss me off.
I hate having to do that
to just play a goddamn video game, right?
Like this.
Or yes, I think a little too much work
for just something that you just wanna enjoy.
I guess the main thing is that there is that beauty
that we learned all this stuff,
but the problem is that the way that,
I have a friend that articulates it that way,
it says like, now you lost a little bit of freedom.
Like every time it's gonna cross your mind, right?
Like this is the steps I need to take
to protect myself and my community.
The challenge that I see and the hope that I have
for this is that from my side, the devs,
we are looking at this and not racing our arms between that.
It wasn't me.
I didn't do that.
See, I didn't do that.
No, no, no.
We need to show up with checks and balances
and go to the communities and tell them,
A, look how we are knocked out.
And we don't like to do that.
I'll be honest.
From the dev side, we don't like to do that
because we feel we are proving ourselves to people.
And that's, I think we are in a place right now
in the gaming world that we have to do that
and we need to learn to be okay with that.
We need to start showing up to communities
with checks and balances of our own
and saying, here's evidence that I am
in a place that you can trust,
not with like, look how great we are
and we're gonna sell fun.
No, no, no, like, look, like actually,
before I ask you for money, here's an actual demo
and here's like my next 10 steps.
And here's my conversations with,
like I think I told you last time,
If we get a publisher, one of my constraints for a publisher is, and I might not get that,
but my dream is if I have to get a publisher is that they will agree to show the contract
to the world.
And they'll probably say, no, but that's my dream to say, I got a publisher because
I didn't have a choice, but here is the contract that I signed.
This is what you guys are, this is the company that we are.
We can do that through a term sheet, and we don't want people's signature to be
But we can do a term change, these are the terms, right?
This is how much percentage we gave away.
These are the rights that we gave away.
This is what we did.
And this is who you're trusting with to make this game.
Be with us if you want to,
and if we don't fit your view,
then we couldn't fund it any other way, right?
If that was the case.
That's what I mean by like,
if we can learn from this, from the depth side,
should be how do we build our own check and balances
that show up to communities with,
asking for trust with evidence, without saying, you know,
we're just a really cool game, you know, buy my game.
That's not enough anymore.
Invisible Ladder, thank you to the five gifted
and Dredd, thank you to the 10.
There was another message that was in chat.
It was kind of interesting.
So, Amarith, you said, shouldn't Steam
have done more to an investigation
before allowing them to release?
I don't think it is fair to pivot blame
to Steam as a platform.
I don't think it is.
Because that is not their job or their role.
Their job or role is to allow you as a developer
to present your game to the world.
They're not going to do deep dives into your investment
and everything like that.
That does not make sense to put that on Steam.
And I think that also dilutes the amount of,
I guess, investigation and direction of an argument
against Intrepid and specifically Stevens messaging.
I think that just dilutes it away.
It moves it away to be like muddying the waters
for making it Steam's responsibility.
I don't think that's fair or make sense.
I think in this case, the claims that Steeman made
about it being no board, not beholden to anyone,
all of that shit that he said,
and now finding out about a board
and suddenly losing control of the company,
that's not on Steeman, that's on him,
and that's on Intrepid, that's a company.
And whatever business deals they made behind closed doors
that they never made us privy to
that have now collapsed the game.
Yeah, I mean, and, and something that I don't like going to rub, but you know, there's one person, of course, trying to beat that's okay. Super cool. It always will. That's that there's always going to be something you're going to find people like me in this world that we're incredibly passionate about what we're doing.
and you're not gonna like that and that's okay like it's fine I'm not gonna
change who I am to make it less cringe or whatever word you use it's okay like
it's it's fine but what I mean is like that's this is the example I was saying
earlier the more you demonize the things that could be good the more
garbage you're gonna get because the opposite of me is Steven and triple A
I'm not saying I'm a good guy because I am not a good guy.
I'm telling you guys today.
I'm not a good guy.
He's a villain.
Dude, he's actually a public team.
We've learned that.
I love my child, which is my game, and I will do anything for my child.
So that's my number one goal to make my game a reality.
So I'm going to do everything I can to make it real.
And if that means that I have to go get a publisher, I don't want to.
But if I need to, I will do it because I love my game, and I want to make it
happen.
Sacrifices one viewer a day like that game real he doesn't you got to do what you got to do you can't just let yourself
Fail because you didn't try all the opportunities where I'm trying to go is like
It's okay to think oh, it's a little cringy that you know
They're so passionate about this and that just be careful with where that's gonna lead you because you will end up buying
You know, you know battlefield 72 and call duty 69 for the rest of your life
It's okay to let a little bit of that weirdness addiction to making something of
high quality as long as you can validate it. If you can hold me accountable, that's
what you should do. But the difference between me and fucking Steve is that you
can go to my server and you have three times a week, three times a week, you have
a post from me. Maggie is here, she can say, you have a post from me with
the development of the game and I've never taken a single dollar from anybody. The other
thing is I was in the hospital in ICU twice in the last month. I wrote updates from the
hospital.
Why are you like this? Just being in the hospital. I swear to God, it's not too self-aggrandized,
but it's to tell you, there are differences in the people in this space. Yeah, there's
definitely a better way. I shouldn't have done that, but I was bored and the doctors
You know too boring. I just want to write something. I still wanted to write
But the point that I'm coming that I'm trying to say is like there's a distance between
Other people and me and and and those and there's more people and me than you think
So if you think we're cringy, there's hundreds of us. We just are hard to find with the tip of the ice
I'm gonna cringe. Yeah, they're not steam is not gonna put my game in front of you
if I didn't get lucky enough to to me Thor and and do
and in December, nobody would have found me.
But the truth is, you go to my server, sit there and see it.
We did three DAUs back to back two days in a row here.
And those DAUs are big posts that we do
and we have questions, I don't know.
Before coming here, I was answering questions
for seven hours straight.
Non-stop, since the moment we posted that to right now.
The reason why we do that is because
we respect our community.
So it's better to find people that even if they're doing it because they want to,
let's say I was doing it because I was just, I just wanted your adoration, that's better than,
and if I'm, if I just want your adoration, but I'm actually showing you the freaking results,
that's different than saying I don't have a board and then having it.
One is somebody that has an addiction and somebody, another one.
Yeah, after investigating all day, like I started today and I was like,
I don't know the truth of any of this. Right? And I was very careful about that.
By the end of the day, now I'm like, he's a liar. But we could just, we could just, you know,
it's, it's quite easy to point it out. We can see that there was investments of some kind.
We can see that people are making leans against the company, those leans against the company to
make one fraudulently as a felony in the state of California where this operates at.
So it's either he's a liar or they're committing multiple felonies from multiple
different parties. Pretty sure he's a liar. It's just like absurd at that point. And it doesn't make
any sense. And at the same time, he's like, oh, the board, when he's been telling us the whole time
that there's no board, there's no one above him. So that's just lies. He's just been lying. And
it makes it, I think the difficult thing, the thing that I will try to tell you guys not
to fall into, don't try to chain forward and be like, well, if you lied about this, you
He lied about everything, right? And all the developers are lying and all the all the streamers are lying
That's you got to stop before that happens. This is provably a lot
Anything beyond this I got no goddamn idea
The only thing I know as a content creator is I was never paid
I just liked the video game and Stephen lied to all of us
That's it. He lied about this and I don't know what else he lied about and hopefully one day
We will and I got no clue and that shit sucks because I liked this game and it's
pass to see it go down like this. Yeah.
Yeah, when people show you who they are, your job is to believe them. And, you know, we,
we were told that there was no one else involved. And now we hear that they, that there is nothing
else matters at this point. Like I'll ask you an honest question, Thor, if none of
this would have happened, everything was okay. The game is okay. Everything is fine.
you would have found out that there's a board, right?
I would have left him here.
So, yeah, even if the company was still there,
even if the company was still there,
and Stephen came out and he's like,
oh yeah, there's a board of directors
that we've had them the whole time.
Oops, like I would have been like, wow,
I'm not supporting that anymore,
because that means that for the last 10 years of development,
you have been lying about you being indie
and running your whole self and, you know,
bankrolling yourself.
I'd be like, wow, that's cool.
he showed me who you are and I'm out like, I feel like rather it's a stupid buy, right? And I think,
I think if the game wasn't dying, I think people would be like, that's a stupid hill to die on,
right? But every hill is stupid. Don't die on the hill. Just make a decision and move on,
right? That's all you have to do. And my decision three days ago was to quit this game
because they're moderation. After talking to, you know, in the same channel with Stephen
and Margaret and hearing their response to me. I'm like, I'm out. That's it. And I didn't have to
sit there and die on the hill. I sent an announcement to our guildies because they're the ones who need
to know about it. I uninstalled the game and I walked away and then they blew it up three days
later and here we are talking about it. They did like it's insane actually. Yeah, don't die on
the hill. Walk away. Yeah. No need. And it's enough like like like Thor saying it's enough
If they lied, nothing else has to happen for you to say, you know what?
That's enough for me, and you know, there's a million games out there.
We're every single one of us freaking in the death space.
We're all competing for your dollars, right?
We're all trying to find a way to reach you with our games.
So don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it.
Bloods and chairs and eyes on screens, man
Play a different game. Oh, we got ads. We're gonna wait in the ads. He heard dollars and arrived. It's true. Yeah
You walked away from overwatch because I lied to you. Yeah, overwatch too. Absolutely. Totally understood
How could you find a game with scummy monetization plans they had when they were charging for cosmetics without being launched I
I spoke out against the charging for cosmetics before launch. I hated that shit.
The one thing I will say is that the monetization was not bad because they were talking about doing a $15 month sub and localizing the price,
which is something that I found very positive and not something that we see enough of inside of the world of gaming.
Localizing the price, say, for a subscription to people in Brazil, I'm very for that.
And that's what they said they were going to do.
So of course I'm going to support that shit. That's what I wanted. That's what I liked.
And you could disagree with me on that, that's fine.
But like, you have to understand which things I was for
and which things I was against.
And you're not gonna find that by telling me what they were.
You're gonna find that by asking.
As ASU subscription based game or just one retail price.
The intention was eventually it was going to be
you could just download the game and pay $15 a month
and the $15 a month would be localized.
And that was it.
So localized pricing for that.
And no box price.
So like free, but $15 a month.
Big dreams, though.
Big dreams, very big dreams.
I did like their content creator program stuff
that they were doing.
I thought that was really smart.
I thought that the localizing of subscriptions
was really huge.
I thought all that was good.
And there were some really good ideas in there
with some of the systems designed,
but they just kept fumbling it.
They did some weird shit and weird implementation.
I've never seen before this kept shitting on for it.
You'll have nodes and seasons.
The nodes and seasons were awesome.
I actually learned a lot of stuff about how, what systems I like in video games.
I'll be implementing that in block games.
We go forward with that.
The combat did feel really good.
That was probably the shining example of the game is the combat.
I'll we're back from the ends.
Yeah.
I hope that makes sense though.
Uh, cool.
107.
Now, if you want to talk about it, let's talk about it, but like,
You know, it's hard to have a conversation on the internet if you open up with an accusation instead of a question
And if you want to have a conversation with someone then ask a question
And if you just want to create drama then make an accusation, right?
Now we figure this out. Let's get back to the nemesis system. Oh god
Well, I actually have to get back to doing TTS messages because chat has piled up many of them
And I'm an hour over my normal time. Very fair
But it's been, it's been great having you on again.
It's always really nice talking to you, man.
And I, I love the ideas that you have and I love the feelings that you have about
the industry in general and just kind of like in game development speaks very
inspiring.
If you guys don't know, uh, this is Kendall developer shade protocol.
We had them on originally for in December.
We had like a four hour interview.
It's like awesome.
Actually, yeah.
I think you started an hour delayed.
True.
Actually, this is only 11 hours and 35 minutes.
I haven't been going through 12 hours.
I'm not over time.
If some TPS are for me just reach me. I definitely overstayed my welcome. I don't want to keep
you.
You did not overstay your welcome, not at all.
Feel free to reach out to me or whatever. I'm happy to answer any questions. No, you
guys have been awesome. I'm just very passionate about this topic. I could sit here quietly
and listen in if you want in case there's something for me, but I won't interrupt anymore.
No, you're good.
with your stream. No, I think the biggest thing, man, is we're very aligned with a lot of stuff on
this. And I always enjoy talking to you about stuff because it's easy to have a conversation.
Even when we disagree on something, you just have a conversation about it. It's not a big deal.
And like that's missing on the internet in many ways. I think a lot of the times the
internet now is very bombastic and you can't have a conversation because if someone disagrees,
it's a fight to the death. You know, the knives come out and you got to go for it.
So it's nice, dude. It's super nice. And I think that what you're doing is good. I
I think that the way you're running your studio is really good.
I think you have really good ideals about game development in general,
and also about management and structure and, you know, how to treat your people
and everything like this, and it's inspiring as shit.
I think it's a really positive thing for the community to see that.
I appreciate it.
I mean, you guys have done, you know, a huge thing for us in our games.
We really appreciate it.
And, you know, from the side of, of, of what we can't say in
through situations like this outside of what's happened, I could tell you
There are people out there. I'm in a dev server with, I don't know, 40 other devs.
There are a lot of people out there that, you know, when they see this stuff happen, they just feel embarrassed for, like, you know, we are, you don't say those devs aren't these devs.
You say devs, right? So we kind of get this, like, I don't know, we get embarrassed for each other when things like this happen and we just don't know how to deal with it very easily.
So there are people out there trying to do right by you, but it's pretty difficult to get to you,
very difficult to find you. So I would say, you know, like Thor said earlier, like,
don't let the negativity of whatever the hell is going on dissuade you away from other people
that are trying to, you know, maybe do something awesome for you. But at the same time,
Yeah, hold this accountable. Don't let us get away with bullshit like this.
We don't need to. It's our job, so we appreciate it. I'll just sit here quietly in case there's
a question for me, but I don't want to interrupt anymore. You guys are here to see the word on me,
so thank you so much for the opportunity and it was awesome.
Dude, always. And thank you for being on. It's always nice to talk to you. And I think
it's cool because we learned some weird shit about leans and UCC and crap I didn't know about.
It's just the area of business I don't know shit about. And I think it's because I immediately,
like, I don't like the world of investment. I don't like the world of financial control
over development process. I find that to be generally anti to creativity. A lot of the times
it's very rare that that turns out in a positive way. And because of that, the moment I formed
my corporation, I made it an S corp, which is a pass through corporation in which there are
no investors. I am the sole shareholder. It leaves and dies with me. And that's the
the way it works and that's it. You know, and then I don't have any of those problems that can
never be a problem that will never be a problem because it structurally cannot actually be that
problem. You know, and I think that this is just another example of how devastating screwing that up
can be, you know. But I mean, what did you say? I keep saying I'm going to leave, but I think
it's important for people to understand this from your side because nobody's asking you
questions. I want to ask you that question. If you have to change it, if you have to
to change the S-corp until it'll see,
you would just tell everybody, right?
I mean, that would be the end of it.
Let's say you feel like investment.
Maybe not necessarily that.
Maybe you want to give some, I don't know,
let's say you make a product, like a game,
and that game, you want to give a little bit of that incentive.
You don't have to do that because you have an S-corp.
It doesn't matter.
But I'm just making a bad example here.
If you want to give, I don't know,
every one of your mods, 1% of the revenue of your game,
we should still do it in an S-corp.
But let's say you decided to do the NLC
to give them a little bit of that.
Let's say you wanted to do that in a structure that is different from what you have today.
You would just tell everybody and that would be the end of it.
Nobody's going to say, oh, but, you know, Thor is changing it to evil pop up in ways.
He's just no, it's like to be rude.
You if you're doing it to do like a split or a share with your staffers,
you just go, hey, we're going to change the corporate structure
because we want the staff members to be shareholders.
And we want them to get a dividend done.
No problems, right?
But like the idea of hiding all of these years
that they're investors, the idea of claiming
that it's all self-funded,
the idea of claiming all of this shit along the way.
And then suddenly be like,
the board of directors has stolen from me.
Like he's on board, dude.
Like that's the shock.
That's the shock and all right there is like,
everyone's like, wait, what?
Wait, wait, what?
Right, like that's-
crazy. That's what does he mean by board? Right? You know, like
that's, that's the whole thing. Yeah. Very unexpected. But
yeah, I mean, I think that the point to me remains that, you
know, if you have to do anything for the betterment of what
you're doing, you would just tell people, and that will be
enough. And nobody's going to be like, Oh, look at this guy
changing his ways. No, you're explaining yourself. And
you're not less for that. The assumption that you have
to hide it is where the evil lies. That's where they
to you. But anyway, keep out. Back here, I'll keep yapping. So I'll just mute. I'm here.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. So we have a good day. I got to chew through
43 TTS. Go ahead. I'll be quieter. I started in 86 with 500 bits said for do you like Star Trek?
If you do, there is a new robe like Star Trek game coming out this February 18th called Star Trek
Voyager across the unknown. And if you want to give it a look here is its link
incominghttps colon slash slash store dot steam
I've discovered it. Where is this? It's a roguelike Star Trek game. What the shit?
That's not what I expected
That's kind of cool. Oh
Dude, it's like FTL too
All right, all right, I'm in
Okay
You know, honestly, I'd play the shit out of it
That's going on the list.
No, I dig that.
I dig that a lot, actually.
Yeah.
I actually really dig that.
I like Star Trek a lot.
I really do.
I really do.
I'm going to turn on music.
We need the music.
Also, by the way, to be clear, I am not discussing Ashes tomorrow.
I'm going to put the video out when the editor finishes it,
And I'm gonna walk away.
I don't want to deal with this shit anymore.
This pisses me off and I'll just be angry.
I just don't want to be angry every day and I am angry.
So I'm gonna leave it alone.
Yeah, no more AOC for anyone ever.
That's the problem.
Yeah, we had all day of it and I think that's what it needed, man.
I think that was the respectful thing to do of like, okay, this was a big part
of our lives over the last many years.
Let's deal with it and then walk away.
Is there a chance a private server gets made?
Doubtful to be rude with you.
Especially now with the way the big architect did it.
My crab!
Can I mine it?
I can't mine it.
I'm not doing enough damage now.
Get on it now and don't be say salty all week.
Dude agreed.
Agreed.
Super agreed, man.
Faxauron with 500 bits said morning to you Thor, or is it evening?
Either way, I Faxauron.
bid you well. Well, going to make this short as I need to hightail it to bed soon.
My nights have been pretty restless. I keep getting this dream where I am swimming in
an ocean of orange soda. Turns out it was just a fantasy.
Fantasy? God damn it.
Jay Psycho said Thor, will you address the accusations you are being paid by Big Ferret?
Specifically, Frog, Toad, Chili, Milo, and Big Mike.
The public demands answers Kappa.
I have, I have indeed been paid by Big Ferret, mostly through bites on the ankle in which I get to scream.
Because that's what they do, because the big ones always do that.
I don't know why they bite the ankles, but that's what they do, they're monsters.
Goblin creations.
actual mod system
meco spud said salutations for lord of the seven ramsticks
i am sad to hear about the state of intrepid and the demise of ashes
but not exactly shocked to see it go
same thank you to introducing me to such an amazing group of people to play games
with
Go lay man sear, tix see ven and many more.
My question to you four is, if beer is liquid bread, is a glass of beer an inverted Wellington?
It have to be sealed. It have to be sealed. It's not sealed.
So it's a sandwich. Because the glass is a layer and the beer is a layer.
if it's just the beer it's a soup.
Mr. Dabalina89 with 500 bits said the birth of Skynet has been brought forward.
Good!
A few days ago, an open source AI agent called Maltbot,
open crawl was released that is capable of performing tasks with a high degree of autonomy.
There is even a Reddit clone, Maltbook.com, run by AI agents,
with a total of 100,000 discussing optimization measures and much more.
Yeah, so I think one of the things that's really interesting about Moatbook is it feels like a
lark to me. It feels like there's a lot of chatbots that are effectively larking in different
things and larking as if they were cognizant. But in the way it feels to me is in reality,
it's just a bunch of chatbots spewing out chatbot shit. We've seen that in the past.
I remember wild articles in the past of like, oh man, these two chatbots have become
sentient it's like now they were just spitting gibberish at each other you know
so like I think I think it's easy to futurism that shit but that's not AGI
it's a powerful search engine searching shit while another powerful search
engine is sure searching shit based on what it just said you know also it's
just a rest sewer you can't just push whatever you want to do it so you
don't even know if those are real bots it's quite funny Tori Kitch with
500 bits said as I live in a part of the country that can't see the northern light,
so to see the northern lights.
All I have to do is stand up too fast.
Sometimes I even get a total eclipse.
Don't do that.
It's not good for you.
Overlord Lopaca said stories like Ashes just reinforce my view that early access
needs to be stopped in general.
No.
While there are some good stories most of the time games seem to just never finish
and don't need to as they already got paid.
I think that's the exact wrong to take, take to take from this, legitimately.
I think instead of trying to punish every developer and everyone out there that makes anything,
you throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Make it about what Steven has said here.
Steven has said here specifically, control the company shifted away from me and the board began directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out.
The whole time he was saying the buck stops with him, no one was above him.
There is no, there's no any answers to. Suddenly there's a board.
That's the problem. Not early access, not, you know, getting the game in alpha.
Steven lying about investments. Steven lying about who held the reins in this
project. That's the problem. And if you try to dilute it into anything else,
you're taking focus away of the actual problem here, which is this.
Wicked Mike with 500 bits said that board was a dartboard with random responses that they
could throw a dart at to answer the various questions and reports sent to them by the
community.
This is the only thing I can think on how they can give such horrible responses.
The dartboard method kinda works, yeah, maybe.
More One Hunt 3R said and now for something completely different.
It was Terano Fuji's retirement ceremony this weekend.
Saw my first comedy sumo as part of it, which was hilarious.
Would never have known about Midnight Sumo on Twitch if you hadn't recommended them.
They're so good.
Midnight Sumo's amazing.
I'm glad you got into it, man.
100%.
Silver Underscore Wolf Underscore official L with 5 euros said hi Thor.
I appreciate everything you do for Brazilians.
I hope other studios look to Brazil like you did.
God please you my friend.
You're awesome dude.
Thank you very very much.
Brazil is a powerhouse, don't sleep on it, localize your prices, localize your game, localize it in Brazilian Portuguese, they will thank you for it.
Mitsunari with 500 bits said him scared for Division 3 with Ubisoft's plans for those creative houses and the layoffs and studio closures they are new to.
Same, same. I love the Division, Division 1 and Division 2 are some of my favorite games that I have ever played, and the idea of Division 3 terrifies me because that's just awful.
to be honest with you to see whether they're they're running that now and yeah let me get that one reported up
there you go
Yeah.
Luke.
Luke Wormskelly said sucks to hear about AOC.
However, since you've mentioned Division 2, have you tried the hardcore character yet?
No, I've not played hardcore on it, mostly because I'm going to be rude with you.
Shit in Division 2 kills you in bullshit ways sometimes.
Like, you'll be rolling up on a 4-star with a bunch of mods going on and then suddenly, like, you just die.
You're like, oh, all right, and like, that's not a fun environment for hardcore.
Like it really is not.
So, no.
Karamak with 500 bits said as someone mentioned in passing, the city of heroes homecoming server
went through a lot of hoops to talk to NCsoft and get their blessing a few years back.
That's cool.
And they've just kind of continued to develop the game as a free MMO like you do with block game.
That's cool.
To pay for it, once a month they open donations until they hit the goal and then they close the donations for that month.
They also post their monthly finances to show that they are making no profit.
That's huge.
No, that's really cool.
Can you send me links for that over in the Discord?
That'd be fantastic.
Thank you.
Like, straight up.
RossLite with 500 bits said find the new game of the year Riz in the dungeon.
What?
Riz in the dungeon?
Bro, what?
Well, you're not mad at Steven, you're just disappointed?
No, I'm mad at Steven.
Don't don't mix that shit up. That's called being mad. Yeah, I'm not just disappointed. I'm mad
That piece of shit line
He lied hard enough that I'm mad
It's not easy to get me that man, but I'm mad like yeah, I'm mad and disappointed. I'm both
I'm fine with that mad tired disappointed
And I was already disappointed before enough that I quit the game three days ago and then I had to come back to do this shit
So I'm double mad. I got woken up
up three hours before I should have woken up because he did this a mad double man triple
man even but mad but status rustle dude entirely big man peter underscore with 500 bits said
any idea on why any idea why that I'm so mad cuz Steven line suddenly there's a board
of directors. There's a board. When before it was the entire narrative was that there
was none, that he's bankrolling in himself.
POPPETER UNDERSCORE with 500 bits said sorry for typo, one sad side of the guild being
gone is how I never got you to rename the Ministry of Truth to the Goblin Chat and
Heresy Quadrant, also in wondering if the board is actually bank reps of Steven
needed to take out a load and could not repay.
Yeah, I mean if you look at the UCC filings that was the thing we were talking
is the two leans that were put against the company for pretty devious sources. And I think,
I think that's the problem, right? I think that's the biggest thing with that is we need to,
we need to just wait and find out where all these pieces land. I think it sucks, man.
With that in mind, I'm going to be repurposing the entire discord, not today,
but likely tomorrow when I wake up, I will be deleting all of the channels that have anything
to do with ashes of creation. I'll be doing a full purge and then taking all of that
and rebuilding the discord around another game that we can play together. I don't
I don't know if it's going to be Final Fantasy 14 or Guild Wars two,
or maybe other things.
It may actually just be a rotating MMO server for us,
where it is the actual pirates are able to play a bunch of different games
together. And I just structured around that.
And I'm not quite sure which one it's going to be.
If it is that, that'll be quite cool.
And understand something is our primary discord has like 150,000 people in it.
So we could do it over there,
but I think a lot of people like going to the actual pirates discord,
because it is focused specifically on a game they play together.
You know, you should archive it.
I don't want to archive that shit.
I don't need to hold on to all of that shit.
Data hoarding.
This is not valuable, right?
It's, it's a valueless thing to do.
I'd rather just move on.
You know, yeah, just exterminate us and move on.
Crabby xv waist.
God damn it.
Yeah, we don't need that data.
Game is gone.
It's not, it's not worth it.
Just nuke it.
You know, kill all of it, please.
I will be, I will be killing all of it.
So you can expect that. Yeah, just kill it and move on.
I'm going to be deleting all the roles and everything, and I'm going to go from there.
We're just going to do a Scorched Earth reset, but I will probably set up sections, and therefore at the very least Final Fantasy 14 and Guild Wars 2, those will be the big ones.
I'll set up a role system like we have in the primary discord where you select the roles that you want for the games that you're interested in, and we'll just go from there.
And I think that that'll be kind of fun as the actual Pirates discord can be the focused gaming discord or our primary discord.
And the primary discord can be the learning discord for that.
You know, and maybe we have some games over on the primary discord and mostly MMOs on
the actual pirates.
I don't know what it's going to be.
So we'll talk about that.
We'll see what it's going to be.
Um, cause there are 10,000 people on the actual pirates discord and there's
150,000 people in the primary discord.
So it is the offshoot discord.
It's our, you know, weird satellite discord, but I want to, I want to do
something to support it.
Yeah.
Make one for old screwing skips.
Well, I will.
I played all the time.
like I'm trying to get to 99 strength right now.
Yeah.
Tamok underscore 2 said I did ponder the entire Ashes thing,
since I woke up to the news earlier today and remembered and realized
that I was invested in the game before I got invested in the wider PS community.
Yeah.
While I knew about Thor before, I did not actively watch his content or interacted with his community.
I got into the community partially, because Thor was so passionate about a game that I was so interested in.
Due to that, I did meet many great people and had tons of fun.
May that continue and thank you.
I'm really glad you found my stuff and you liked that too.
That's awesome.
I'm waiting for a number of games that are coming up soon.
I'm looking forward to Chrono Odyssey.
This is another really big one that I'm after.
Cinder City is another one that I'm very much excited for.
And that's at the end of the year.
Well, I guess Chrono Odyssey is at the end of the year.
We don't know when Cinder City is going to be.
Sincerity used to be known as Project LLL.
It's from NC Soft and it's a Korean game.
But as far as I know, there's no pay to win in it.
If they added pay to win, I'd be pretty upset,
but you know, there's no pay to win in this one.
So I'm into it.
I'm super into it.
And I'm looking forward to those.
Yeah, what about RKH2?
I thought RKH2, what was it with RKH2?
Isn't it a single player?
It wasn't an MMO.
Was that the case or was that wrong?
NC Soft, they're pretty good, I think.
Yeah, NC Soft has never really had a problem.
The thing is, is NC soft is a Korean studio and in Korea it is very
common to do pay to win.
So it's usually if you get NC soft, there's going to be something in there.
And I, that's the one thing I don't like.
Oh, you're thinking crimson desert.
You're right.
I'm thinking of crimson desert.
What are they doing with our cage too?
Is that becoming a thing?
I think our cage really was based on pay to win though.
Like they have to do that for our kids too.
You know, I don't know anything about chronology.
I never played the betas or anything like that, but it looks
freaking cool. Like it looks really goddamn cool. And I'm excited for it. So 11 years
originally came out with it. I know there's a on two. That's becoming a thing too. So
like that is something to keep it on. Our cage was a shit show not worth it. Fair. We
already played our cage private server. You know, that one died today. So maybe I'll
just give it a miss.
RL05 with 500 bits said hey Thor, something occurred to me and I wanted to say, you're
probably going get a lot of flak of people saying you should feel guilty or responsible
for people wasting money buying the game.
Sure.
Don't.
Although your stream did influence me, you're about as responsible as any other review
left on Steam.
Besides, I got to meet and play with some lovely people.
Can replicate those kinds of experiences.
There was more but the limit approaches, don't feel bad, well wishes from Silvers.
Yeah, it's one of the things that I'm so, you know, intent about of any time someone
asks me should I play whatever game that I'm currently playing.
The always answer is, maybe.
Do you like this kind of game?
Are you in a financial position where it makes sense for you to get it?
Have you thought about these different things?
I can't decide that for you.
I don't think you should ever, ever try to overwrite your own critical thinking
with a streamers or anyone's right.
Advertisement only works if you let it and you should be making those decisions
for yourself based on your own feelings and thoughts of a video game or your own
feelings and thoughts of your own finances, et cetera.
And the moment you go, Grock is this true on, should you buy something?
You lose that control, which is why I've never, ever done that when someone
ask me and it's funny too, because I get flack for that shit where people will be
like, should I buy this game? And I go, well, let's talk about it. And then people
go, I just want to guess your no answer, bro. Like we've had people that say that
and I'm like, it's not that simple. And I will sit down and say it every single
time because it is an important distinction to me of never having that
simple answer of, yeah, you should buy it or no, you shouldn't buy it's
always, what is your situation? Do you even like this kind of game? Every
And you can look back over any of the mods or anything that I've done for years and you'll find that shit
Yeah, no one says dead on the internet. I'm aware, but I don't give a shit
I'm gonna keep doing it and
People can be mad or not mad about it and you guys are as a community of built up around the behavior that I have in that direction
So why would I not do that? You have supported me in
My hope to have nuance on the internet. I will continue to do that because if I didn't you wouldn't be here
Right? That's the whole thing
Why are you a goblin with Madison?
ShanoLT3 with 500 bits said Yachir500 actually 2B2T isn't banned but have enforced rules for the first time in its lifetime.
And now any inappropriate swear words, a censor to only be seen by you even if you try to say it in chat it is whispered to you.
All inappropriate builds, signs etc have been world edited out by staff.
Wild.
Like I said, yeah, I mean it's just Mojang being more restricted.
It kind of makes sense. Chaos servers were meant to be unmoderated, but that can't really exist.
I think if you're going to an environment like that and you're looking for an unmoderated
experience, you go to 4chan and you go into a 2B2T server, that's kind of what you're there for,
right? So that is weird that that's happened for them. I think if you're going for curated
experience, say something like Ashes and World of Warcraft, generally you expect a level of
moderation. That makes sense.
Moon Alyx26 said for the Ashish shenanigans, taking Steven's statement at face value,
that he essentially lost control of the direction the game, company was going.
The shit show that happened in the past few months with the no fixes and no moderation
makes much more sense.
It does.
It super does.
I don't give him a quarter for that though.
Because the entire time, the whole lifetime of this game, the story that we were fed
is that he was bankrolling and that there was no board, there was no directors, there
was none of that shit. All of it was completely based on Stephen himself and his vision with
no one to stop him and no one to get in the way of that process. And then at the end
of it all, we find that that's not true from his own mouth. Because the board began
directing actions that I could not ethically agree with. What board? Who has more control
than the game director to bankroll the whole thing? And that sucks. I think
That's shit. Yeah. Bankrolling with loan sharks. Bingo. Yeah
Kirame said good day for I finally managed to hit the cursed quest button
But being Australian and having responsibilities with kids means I have to go sleep
But if I can I accept the quest your heart?
Good, I think I think the quest that I gave you was the uh, what is it?
It was stargazing pie. I think today was stargazing pie
WXRTHLTL underscore JWLPKLZ with 500 bits said time to begin the loop.
Well good morning groundhogs cause it's cold out there today.
Then put your little hand in mine, there ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb.
Babe, I got you babe, I got you babe, I got you to hold my hand, I got you to understand,
I got you to walk with me, I got you to talk with me, I got you to kiss good night,
I got you to hold me tight, I got you, I won't let go, I got you to love me so,
I got you babe, I got you babe, I got you bait.
Bait.
Shlerp said hey Thor, happy Groundhog Day, apparently something something ashes of creations.
Anyways, we still want fart noise DLC in heartbound and a fartbound OST.
7.
Grim, you're a 7.
The Met4L god said not to derail the AOC discussion, but did you see that Nvidia cancelled their
plans to give open AI 100 billion dollars?
I did not see that, um, good, good, good, good.
Rodry Golge said I guess, Ashes of Creation became the ashes of a creation.
I hope to play that game, so sad it came down to this.
I'm sad it came down to this, but it was a metaphor on making it.
I prepped with 500 bits said hello Mr. Ware, super sadge about the implosion of AOC, what
I'd like to hear your opinion about is Intrepid publishing ban lists as a sort of response
to people calling out the dogwater moderation.
I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure they could get in trouble as character names are pseudonymous
and thus might be affected by local data privacy laws like the GDPR in the EU.
Thanks and take care yaa heart.
You take care dude, thank you very much.
Zaftaroth with 500 bits said we've talked about Project Gorgon in the past, they just
hit theer 1.0 update and have a fresh start server, I promise it will at least be silly
fun if not very compelling, I find the game super compelling and funny.
Yeah, I mean, you have said many times that you loved it.
Like you have.
So I kinda wanna check it out.
Like the community's talked about it quite a bit.
Quite a bit, yeah.
TimbraVevaulfee said I found a point hole with AOC.
On their website it says, Game access.
Early access bundle.
Includes full access to Alpha 2, Beta 1, Beta 2, one month of game time to be
used after the game launches and switches to a subscription-based product, and the
non-exclusive heartbows vigil cosmetic cloak, and access to our end-art private test realm,
PTR. This purchase supports ongoing development and community testing.
Users will need a subscription at launch. Ashes of creation.com, shop, P.
It's so sad. It's just so sad.
Master Sprite said hi Thor, last time you told chat about Rocko's Basilisk, I believe
you left out one interesting detail.
The Basilisk, being a creation of pure logic, will not torture people who are unaware of
it, since these people can't knowingly help or harm the progress of bringing it into
existence.
So, Thor, by informing chat about the Basilisk, you have turned its eye on all who didn't
know about it yet.
You've doomed them all.
You've doomed them all.
Blade underscore punna said it still blows my mind that you didn't know about Lancer before
I asked you about it a few months ago, but I'm stoked that you got into it.
Yeah, I've been running my campaign totally remotely using some interesting tools that
integrate with comp, comp pretty dang well.
My question, would you be open to creating a Lancer channel in the Discord so that those
of us who play can share resources with you and the community?
I'd love to share some stuff I've done in case it could inspire, help others.
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go through and make a section in the primary Discord
for tabletop RPGs and make a channel in there for Lancer, and I think that's what
we're gonna do.
That's all we'll start doing, I, I don't wanna do that tomorrow, I'm gonna do
some Discord work tomorrow, we'll do it on stream, it'll be fun.
Lurker in the wires said you told me not to grow certain mushrooms near exposed wood,
and then I grew those mushrooms near exposed wood, and now my house is full of mushrooms
I will never be able to get around to eating.
I blame you for me getting fat on mushrooms and running out of noodles, and my dog divorcing
me, and my mailman leaving me for the miltman.
Hashtag uninstall, yassaj
Good! Good!
Good!
Ridiculous!
Casconoiders with 500 bits said it seems the theme of 2025 and 2026 is shooting yourself in the foot and crying about it.
Dude, say good games going under for really preventable reasons.
It's crazy!
How many games will we need to ditch for terrible reasons?
Losing so much faith in humanity right now?
Do people really don't think things through this badly?
Dude, it's honestly insane to me to see it just go this crazy ass direction.
Like it really is.
It's just, it's absurd to watch this happen this way.
And like, man, man, both in the first quarter, it is, it's both in the first quarter,
What the hell, man?
Yeah.
But counterpoint is high tail.
True.
High tails boss.
If I tell dies.
I'm gonna crash out.
It's the last bastion dude.
Video games are 100% a luxury.
Oh yeah.
No video games are 100% a luxury.
They're an entertainment thing.
Right.
And video games are entertainment.
But for some people it's a little bit more than that.
For some people, it's their social network.
For some people, it's their ability to interact with others.
And for those people, it's much, much more than a luxury.
And I think you have to understand that.
For me, it's a luxury.
For you, it's a luxury.
And I think that's fine.
For some people, it's their entire social interaction.
And that's huge, you know?
So like, yeah, take it what it is for you, but it's different for others.
Yeah
Xandor said I'm out of the loop what exactly did the moderators of AOC stand to gain out of acting biased in favor of the most toxic guild in the game
Bro who knows the guild leader friends with some of the mods or something no idea
Literally like we have no idea why that happened at all
No idea whatsoever, but like there it is. You know like that's
That's it. You know like that's
Insane.
Shnitzel 1989 said hello Thor, did you know that it is impossible to run on a metal festival?
You always ran, because you are always past tense.
The joke was intense, like a fire at the circus.
Annapoli said hey Thor, was there any new information that came out about AOC?
I was in the call with you in the guild this morning but I have slept since then.
A lot. I've got a video that should be coming out today or tomorrow. I've pitched it to
Shade Lock and I'm like, hey, I've hit the button a bunch of times.
Um...
Yeah. Should have something for that.
Zafaroff with 500 bits said I know it's a bit left field, but I feel genuine guilt about how much I pushed for the game
There are people who told me they got into it because of me and I feel like I got people to waste their money
hmm
I mean like I was always trying to be as clear as possible of like you need to make that decision for yourself
I'm not gonna tell you for that, but I feel the same 100%
You know, there are people that are like I got into the game because of you and
Something way to find bad financial decisions to do it and it's like there's no way that I could have known this shit
You know, and like I can't, I wish I could see the future on that shit, but you just can't, you know, the only thing that I could do is be like, okay, um, we're going to go play a more established game, right?
Like that's, that's bad all that we can do and it sucks.
It sucks ass and I feel bad about it, but like, you can't do anything about that.
The only thing you can do is call out this bullshit, which is what I've done all day.
And then we got to move on.
We're going to do something else because like this is shit, dude.
This is complete shit.
You know and to see them
Do this and then like there's no recourse for the devs. There's no recourse for the players like that's ass man
That's complete ass. I don't know what that game is. No, cool
Has steams anything about the refunds not yet, but the game is starting to enter that critical period of giga negativity
If you want steam to give refunds give it a negative review legitimately
So steam cares deeply about people's perception of their platform as consumers.
And if they, if people feel that steam is protecting ashes of creation in this
movement, steam will take this decision to allow you to do refunds.
That's, it's happened in the past.
It'll happen again.
And as you can see, people are already voting immediately with that.
That's the best thing you can do.
You already give it a horrible review.
I did as well.
I mean, like I wrote mine on January 9th, and it was an eight review.
Like I have a massive freaking review of all the shit that's going wrong.
And I've left it up there, you know, like, so like that's been there for a while.
Yeah.
And they'll just make shit up.
Steam will think that your review bombing.
Yeah, don't make shit up.
Say why you're upset.
You have to, you have to explain yourself.
It's really easy to be like shit scan.
Right.
But it's, it's more difficult to sit down and be like, I am upset
because of these reasons.
And I think that the second one, that's the way you should, should act generally.
I am upset for these reasons.
This is why as a consumer that I was misled, I am upset.
Steam won't have a refund, right?
And like if you just, if you just scream incoherently, you're not going to get anything
of value back.
And that's just the shit way to live anyway.
It's not good for you.
It's not good for anyone around you.
Hands of blue.
Thank you.
The 20 gifted subs.
God damn dude.
It's incredibly nice of you.
That is really, really nice of you, man.
What a boss.
Jesus.
But I think that it's, for me,
it's always really important
that you guys communicate directly.
And you don't fall out of that trap of short phrases
to like create bombastic scenarios.
You know, just screaming, shit scam.
No.
Instead of saying shit scam,
Steven lied to me and to all of us
about bankrolling the game and having no one above him
to control it.
And suddenly there's a board.
That to me is much more honest
and much more effective than a shit scam.
Because if someone hears shit scam,
they're probably gonna discount you.
They won't listen to what you have to say
because you provided no evidence or information.
But if you show them what's going on
and you say this is why this is happening,
this is why I'm upset, they get it.
And now you've inoculated that person against that behavior.
Screaming incoherently doesn't do that.
MoonLix26 said hello, fall in chat, or follow on to my much earlier TTS to correct it.
So, to me, it sounds like Intrepid was doing well, expanded, and then started doing worse.
Probably due to employee bloat, started bleeding money, and was potentially forced to go get
outside investment, which then caused a board that has apparently caused the company, and
thus game, to implode and cause a bunch of other, separate, problems to light.
Ya love ya bongos, ya goblin ya stinky.
So let me read through your analysis here real quick.
Just to make sure.
Where is this?
Where did it go?
Where is this? Where did it go?
NCTDS, there we go.
Tense again, Trepid was doing well. They were early 2025.
Expanded and then started doing worse, probably due to employee blow.
Started bleeding money and was potentially forced to get outside involved.
involved. And so that's, that's like a narrative. That's like a
story, but we don't know if any of that story is true. Right?
We don't know when they were forced to get outside investment.
We don't know when any of that when any of that should happen.
The only thing we can see are the UCC filings, which are
leans against the company for debts that are due. And with
that in mind, like, we don't have any information outside of
that outside of suddenly Stephen was like, the board has
ousted me. They've, they've made me do things that I
can't agree with. We don't even know what those things
are. We don't even know what the board claims. We didn't
even know there was a board before this and suddenly there is a board and
they're able to rest control away from him as the game director and bank
roller of the game, which means he's full of shit and has been for a long
period of time.
So that's success, but we don't have anything outside of that.
And I guess we could sit down and do conjecture all day.
We already have for about 12 hours, but at the end of the day, we
don't know what the hell is going on.
And I'd love to have that closure, but I don't have it.
So I'm putting together a video of all the things that we investigated
today, the stuff that we talked about, the things that look fishy, the
things that look suspicious. I'll put that video up on YouTube and dust my hands and
I'm going to do something else with my life because this shit and a person like this lying
in this way to us for so long is not worth my goddamn time. I don't need to make it a
part of my personality to be angry at Steven. I need to go on to going and doing other
shit that's valuable to my life and this shit ain't worth it. Take the day, move
one.
Mr. Underscore Bubbles 42 said Ashes of Creation was my first alpha.
It was my first hands-on experience in game testing and seeing how the sausage is made.
I bought into the dream of a dynamic living breathing world with both eyes open.
Steven burned my trust in him, not Indy.
Good.
Yeah.
Cause to be honest with you, it's not normally like that.
I've never seen something like that happen.
That's wild, that's new for me.
I'm glad that it burned your trust in him, not in India overall.
Kick ass then.
Yeah.
Mr. Underscore Bubbles42 said my belief in India and my trust in India is the future
of gaming for new ideas and new dreams is unbroken.
Thor, keep doing what you're doing with Game James and Indie Months.
I truly believe that is a true good for gaming and gamers.
My heart goes out to the AOC devs who truly tried.
I hope they can land on their feet.
Yeah, I agree.
I super agree with that.
Um, I think, I think the only people that I'm personally angry at are Steven and Margaret.
And that's it.
Those are the only two I don't trust them.
I don't like them.
And after interactions with them, I, I just, I don't think I'm going to change on that.
And I'm fine with that.
I'll just have that.
And I just, if I ever see them, you know, as part of another game or
anything like that, I'd be like, cool, I'm not touching that shit.
And then I'll be like, it doesn't matter how cool the game
is that dude's touching it. I know better, right? And they've actually looked and
seen the people pay $50 for this, they did, yeah.
Famlo246 with 500 bits said YAR cheer 500 is for the bread.
You're for the bread. You're for the bread.
Getnessheart said hey Thor, how does it feel to be stuck in a time loop?
No, not again.
Gwarzone said long time listener, first time caller. With this new knowledge you've
gained about discerning which game to get involved, excited about, can you create a
game decision document to help us take these same steps to help make better decisions about
what games to buy?
Sure.
I think I could help out with that.
That might be kind of fun.
We'll go through it together.
Well, I'm Margaret.
Sorry I was away.
I recently reported a number of different people inside of the game for really heinous
behavior, actually insane shit.
One of the people on our server that we reported basically just signed in every
day with multiple alts that would just say things about Jewish people.
That's what he did.
and insulted Jewish people all day. There was another guy who would praise Hitler every day.
There was a guy that would go around and say that he wanted to build a group to kill all the LGBT
people on the server. We were reporting all these up. There was another person that actually
claimed that they were part of a group that organized the swatting of my house multiple
times last year. That was cool. So I brought all these to Margaret and I was like, yo,
we have tickets in for this stuff. You guys need to moderate this. These people need to
be banned. We had to wait a full eight days to get a response, even though I'm in a channel
with Stephen Sharif and Margaret at the same time, in a channel with them. And I send them
screenshots of this, and I send them the tickets. It took eight days to get a response. And her
response was this. This was part of it. But I want you to read this part. This is the one that's
most important to me in this. She said, to be transparent about what happened on our end,
we investigated the reports you and others submitted. The messages in question occurred
in a very short window, ruffling 15 minutes span and involved only a handful of posts.
The content of those messages was insane. It doesn't matter how quickly or how many it was.
That's an insane thing to put up. While some of the language used was inappropriate and
unacceptable, our current moderation framework does not always move directly to permanent bands
for first-time offenses of this nature. In many cases, we issue warnings first with the expectation
that behavior can improve if it doesn't we escalate. What she's saying here is that
that if you say those types of things,
we're gonna let you go scot-free
because we wanna keep you as a customer.
And keeping you as a customer is more important
than anything else.
And they lost our entire community for it.
I quit the game three days ago because of this.
I announced it out to the Discord
of exactly what was happening
and showed them what was going on.
Everybody bailed.
That's thousands of people bailed
because of this.
But then three days later, they killed the game off.
And it's like, if this is your reasoning
for how to moderate a community effectively,
I don't want to touch anything
that you are ever moderating again.
I don't want to touch anything that you're working on.
I don't want any of it, cause that's crazy, dude.
That is like the shittiest way to do that.
What game is this?
This is ashes of creation.
So it's like, nah, dude, that's ass.
And I wrote it up in here.
I said fast forward to the current phase of Steam
and everything imploded, tons of content
We reported back in 2025, we're still in fixed.
It was extremely low hanging fruit.
The systems that were built on were developed in weird directions that didn't
seem to make sense or feel good overall.
On top of that moderation is basically not existent.
So players routinely spending racial slurs, threats and hate speech in
global all day and any of the game, these people would be immediately bad.
And like, I went to bat for intrepid many times over the years, encouraging
people to give them a chance, removing misinformation and growing and
showing the community all the best part points of the game on a
personal level.
I'm incredibly disappointed in the entire company.
know, this kind of environment isn't the kind of environment that I want to build
a community around and not one I personally want to support.
I ended up quitting the game three days ago due to this.
And now it's been shut down entirely.
And it's just like, dude, like you, you can't, you can't do that shit.
You can't.
And like, it's just, it just makes no sense.
Like if you're running, if you're running a game, like a public game,
you can't say that shit, right?
You just can't, you can't allow players to be in there for that.
And if you're, if the way that you want to moderate your environment is, oh,
I know that guy over there is screaming that he loves Hitler.
Like I know that he's doing that, but the way we're going to moderate him is we're
going to be like, Hey man, can you, can you stop doing that?
Can you stop?
Can you stop praising Hitler in the server?
Please, we're going to check back in a, in a couple of days and see if
you're doing it again, but please stop.
Can you stop doing that?
Like, what are you doing, man?
Like this, it's like a crazy, that's a crazy as thing.
dude. So I was just pissed, man. I was pissed. And I, I screen capped all the
logs of the conversation with that. And like, then I was like, all right, if
this is the way you want it to be, I'm out. In fact, I have, I have another
screenshot to show you with this where I was just as angry. I'm gonna go pull
this up.
Because I dunked on him for it, man. Like I dunked on him. And this is,
this is in the chat with them. And it just, it pisses me off. So I said,
Aside from the above as per your own community rules and restrictions,
both of these users are in violation of the following circle standards.
The third circle standard explains that you hold the sole right to determine what is harassment,
meaning you've determined that all of this within the context provided is not harassment
and is acceptable behavior.
And they showed them their own TOS, you know, I was like, what the hell is wrong with you?
And then there was another one that I talked about in here.
Find this.
Let me find this.
So the main problem with this entire situation is that your current policies prevent you from
acting until someone ends up dead or commit suicide or harassment.
You have all the warning signs here.
You have the correlative message sent directly from the user.
You know exactly where they're coming from.
You know exactly what they're talking about.
You have, like you have everything, right?
And you want to retain this player as a customer over anything else.
If you guys want to make a lasting MMO, then you need to fix this policy.
People would be banned immediately for this on any other platform.
And I know that because I've been through it.
This is the shit I was saying directly to Margaret.
And these are the types of responses she was giving back of like, oh yeah, we're just
going to, we're going to give them a warning.
I was like, what's wrong with you, dude?
Like that's, I just can't get over that.
It's just like the most insane corporate response I've ever seen.
No.
Yeah.
Spare Melody said, hey pirate you've had something on your shirt the whole day, it looks like
you dropped your smile.
Oh, god damn it.
N00BL0R13N said, heard about stars reach.
No.
Seems like a cooler sandy MMO.
They had devs from here and there, ever quest in some Star Wars so hype or not.
HTTPS colon slash slash.
Stars reach, huh?
Sandbox science fantasy MMO where you explore deeply simulated living worlds in a shardless
galaxy, bite aliens in action combat and live in a fully player driven economy full of peaceful
ways to play.
Unifriends can govern a planet.
What?
What?
Hi.
Let's go on the list to check it out.
That's cool.
Playable World's Inc.
I've never heard of these guys.
I'd be interested to know what the progression system is and kind of the direction of the
game because it seems very sandbox, right, which makes me wonder like what stuff do
you get?
How do you get stronger, right?
Yeah, well generally, it's absolutely wild.
Shardless, too. Shardless. How?
Yeah, I wanna know more. Thank you.
Thank you for telling me about it.
Herdahl with 50 Swedish Krona said Ashes of Cremation.
Shit.
Erilfe said still bummed a little about Ashes, but watching the whole thing implode is amusing at least.
I'll just remember the fun in-game, like getting accidentally kidnapped by a ship on land,
getting jump-scared by you landing on my head, and working as a group to progress the town.
So weird.
Golem answers lost his mind.
It's too late.
He's gone too long without being punched in the face.
Ah, the crab.
Wait.
I do not get...
I do not get gems, I'm sad.
Not doing enough damage now.
Yep.
Leica42 with 500 bits said hello for all, I have learned that our dev has never played
OSRS will you do the favor of telling him how much fun he will have with you now.
It's only one small favor right?
So, so developer if you've never played old school Rinscape I have a couple of questions
for you.
Do you like number go up?
Do you like trains?
Do you like more number go up?
When you press one button for 16 hours a day, maybe for a month, do you like trains?
How do you feel about slapping a crab?
How do you feel about trains?
Old school RuneScape it's a good game you should play.
Yeah.
Ronan Z said since you are thinking about Final Fantasy XIV, you should know that
The North American servers have been experiencing DDOS-like attacks for the past two to four
months.
Star underscore the underscore derpy underscore octoing said one thing you mention a lot is
localizing your prices.
But a question is like how do I know a price is right for a region?
For this example let's say you want to localize a price of a $20 game.
How do you know what price you want to put in a Brazilian market?
Sure. So here's what I do, right?
The first thing I do is I go, okay,
we're talking about Brazil.
What is the average household income over a month in Brazil?
What is the average household income in terms of,
or actually what's the average household expenses
in a month?
Because something you have to understand
is when you're selling a video game,
you are not selling food.
You're not selling food.
You're not selling a need to have.
You're selling a nice to have.
And you have to think about what is called the expendable income of the people in the area of the world.
And part of this, you can actually find the expendable income from like a bunch of different areas, right?
You know, just kind of looking at general economics for that area, but it can vary wildly based on, you know, cost of living in the area that they're in inside of the country or anything like that.
But another thing you look at is look at the kind of games that people pirate.
Look at the games that people were pirating there.
If you want to sell a game in Brazil, find out what games they're pirating.
But at how much those games cost but at what genre those games are in piracy is an economics and service issue
If people are pirating a game
It's likely because it's too expensive or not available and if people in Brazil are pirating something it's not because they're dicks
It's because they want to get the game and they can't afford it
So you look at the economics you look at the general trends of what people are pirating
You look at what they're talking about and you go from there, right?
The way that we came down to 20 beer L for heartbound in Brazil was doing that and I promised them it would always be 20 beer L
regardless of the changes in economics over time.
And I've kept that promise.
It's been that way ever since because that 25% of our overall income as a studio from game sales has been Brazil.
That 25% of sales 25% of income, even though it's 60% off compared to the USD in Brazil, support them.
If you do the work, and it's not a huge amount of work, it's just a little daunting at first.
If you put in the effort on that, you will be supported by those people because they are more than appreciative because they usually get overlooked.
Same thing in Poland, same thing in Australia, same thing in New Zealand, same thing in, amazingly, Canada.
A lot of these countries just pay a premium, sometimes up to 50% over normal costs, just because they live in a country that doesn't get normally localized into it.
you reduce your piracy, you increase your income and everybody's happy.
Canada, yeah, even Canada.
Canada actually pays an extra tax for no reason a lot of times.
It's really silly.
Yeah, Poland.
The Polish, what the, um, I have been practicing trying to pronounce that as
what the, you do that.
Hard as an American, but, um, they're, they usually pay like a 20 to 30%
increase over normal costs, reduce the price for them.
It's the biggest thing.
Australia and New Zealand.
Yes.
One of the things that I do as well is when I'm selling something for 10 US dollars, I
sell it for 10 Australian dollars too.
I found that if you price parity match that, because what you'll find is even though if
you take 10 dollars US and you bring it to Australia, it'll be worth more money over
there because of currency conversion.
10 Australian dollars has about the same price parity for purchasing power parity
for local goods and services as 10 dollars US does in the United States.
10 bucks is worth about the same 10 bucks locally as our 10 bucks is locally. The difference
is when you deal with macroeconomics and you're taking $10 in U.S. and transferring it to Australia.
So why would you make them pay more for a video game? They usually call it the Australia
tax. Like they make jokes about it. Australians are kind of hard people. They're into that.
You know, they're like, they're like, all right. Yeah, it was just the Australia
tax. But like that's a shitty thing for them, dude. And if you can remove that
and just make your game the same price in the U.S. as in Australia, they'll
buy the shit out of it. And that's great for you. And it's great for them. Just use a VPN
can't do that on steam. Yeah, if you use a VPN, they they will eventually ban your account
if you're trying to do that stuff. Also, it doesn't work because it's based on the location
of your payment processor. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of is yeah, yeah, we are yet is yeah,
we will. Yeah, exactly. Australia matters a lot to New Zealand does to New Zealand
usually gets gets forgotten even more than Australia because New Zealand is smaller.
It's a, I'm very passionate about that, very much so I've had it for ever.
CatKoro said having recently gotten a new PC after 10 years.
I've upgraded from an i5-6600 and 1070 to a Ryzen 777800X3D with RTX 5000 and 70.
How would you describe the difference of these two systems?
Well, the RTX 5070, I don't know how that's comparable to the Ryzen.
I use an AMD processor, and it's my first AMD processor.
I've used Intel all before this and I got burned by the oxidation issue that they had before.
So like, there's that.
But that RTX 5070, was there a problem with the 50 series?
I'm still at a 4090 and I'm happy with that.
Yeah, I got burned by it twice. It was very upsetting.
I don't know much about the 50 series because I was just like, nope, not gonna do it.
You like your 5070? That's good.
Yeah, if you're going from an i5-6600 though, that's a...
Do a 78X3D, you're gonna find the 78X3D as a good God mode, comparatively.
Like, it's really goddamn good.
Really, really good.
50 series is overpriced for what it is. That makes sense. That makes sense.
I had a 38 ETI for years. I loved that thing.
You still rolling with the 300 series? 3000 series? They're not bad. Not bad at all.
38 ETI was a powerhouse, man. The only thing that I could upgrade to was the 4090 and I finally
got one. So it's pretty happy about it. Now they're a billion dollars.
KillerSquid26003 said you were very clear in leaving the choice with this to decide whether or not to get into AOC.
I'm glad.
I was convinced by your gameplay and you talking about it to JayJoyM, but it always felt very distinctly my choice.
Good.
And I don't regret playing with the actual Pirates even for a second.
Tha can you for making my experience in AOC as fun as it was?
Looking forward to the next game we can all dive into together.
Thank you very much. I'm really glad because that was a big concern of mine, because I think we're like,
It's a scam. Get him. You know, I was like, God damn it, dude. You know, we ever play World of Warcraft again? I don't know. I don't like
Midnight not because the content. I don't like that they put a premium currency on housing
It feels gross
Like for me not for like in general. It's just gross like it feels gross for me
And like that's like a line in the sand for me was like stop monetizing this just give just give me something cool
I already pay a sub like stop it
And like it just I just can't dude. Yeah
Yeah, I just I just couldn't that that like hearth steal over to the hell that shit was. Yeah
Yep
You just run this stuff in Dungeons and stuff though. I the fact that it's got a premium component to it, dude
I'm
I'm sick of the like let me explain. I know this is a stupid hill to die on
Right. I know it is and I know it's probably lame to you. I
I am sick of the over monetization of games.
I am sick of selling a storefront first and a game attached to it.
And when I look at things like what World Warcraft has done, where they are moving
more and more into the direction of a storefront and now adding a premium currency and adding
extra shit for this for more monetization, it just makes me so disinterested.
I just don't want to do that.
And it's not about any of the content of the game or some like grand,
you know, vision, shit or any, it's,
I just don't want to support that anymore, man.
Classic is fine to me. I think that's great.
But like the movement of companies to create monos,
monetization first in the game, second has just turned me off of so
many goddamn games.
That's one of the reasons I was actually excited for ashes, dude,
because they were doing a subscription only system.
And they were localizing the subscription price.
So if you lived in Brazil, it would cost less for you.
And I was like, that's freaking great, dude.
Like they were gonna make it so there were Brazilian servers
and you paid the Brazilian price to play
on the Brazilian server.
You're on the US servers,
you paid the US price to play on the US server.
And I was like, that's a really noble way to approach that.
I think that's a really cool thing to do
because it makes the game more accessible
to people financially.
It was a good deal.
It was a good idea.
And like, that's rare now, man.
Everything is just packaged up with a shitload of pay to win or some garbage
cash shop crap that is like put forward as the forefront of the game instead of
something that is an option.
It's the thing in the front that you have to walk through.
It's like when you go to an event and you have to walk through the gift shop to
get to the event.
I don't want to walk through the gift shop anymore.
I just want to go watch the damn movie.
Does that make sense?
I love it. It's awesome. The art is amazing. The world is really cool. I really like the
way that they do roles for risky actions. I think that's pretty goddamn cool. I dig that.
I dig it a lot actually. Lancer looks cool as hell. I want to play in a campaign before
I run one obviously. Like that's something I want to do. So I want to see if I can
find someone you can DM it for me and then I can have a blast. Yeah. So that should be
a lot of fun to me.
Kendo zero seven with five Canadian dollars said, Hey Thor, sad to hear what happened to ashes.
Was looking forward to trying it when it released. In other news, will you try League six for
OSRS?
Maybe I am I have one character and it's this guy and he's a group Iron Man character. I was
thinking about maybe making a whole new character that is a not an Iron Man character.
And then becoming a weird trade baron and then choosing one strange item and then buying all of it from the auction house
Kind of like people who collect burnt food. I want to choose one thing and just become the guy who hoards that
I don't know why I want to do that. I just have a compulsion to do it
I think that makes me an old-school RuneScape player though, so I think it's probably perfect of course
The original game bros with $10 said I think the MMO genre is kind of dead at the current time in gaming
kind of I would say that it's small but there's a lot of good options there
Gilwars 2 Final Fantasy 14 both fantastic games really got them good so like
and even ESO ESO is really it's older I think the problem is is so many MMOs
have tried and failed to make their mark and they fumbled in such weird ways
New World was a really good one but it fumbled really hard in the beginning
and it never quite recovered from that.
Ash's accretion is fumbled to,
to honestly the only thing I could say is hubris at this point.
But like, when you look at things like old Scorunescape,
they've stood the test of time.
Like World of Warcraft is still around.
Swothor is actually really goddamn cool.
I really like Swothor.
What's your opinion in the MMOs?
I actually really like in the MMOs,
even though a lot of them turned to pay to win
at some point.
A good example of this is if we go and look at,
God, what is it called?
It's called Realm of the Mad God.
realm of the mad god exiled. This is a really cool ending in the moment. It's,
it's a small game where basically it's a bullet hell and then you,
you move around top down and, uh, when you die, you lose your character.
It's rogue like, yeah, it's ancient. They gave me a super old.
It's from 2012. Love it. Super fun. Rome of the Mad God is fun as shit.
And if you haven't seen it, this is what it looks like.
Although you don't have to rotate the camera. That's optional.
I don't rotate the camera when I play it. I don't like that,
but it's fun. It's a really fun game.
And I've died so many times.
Heh heh heh.
Early Mad God is very fun.
But it's an example of what you can do,
like with a smaller team to make an MMO.
You can do that.
That's a thing, right?
Old school nearly killed itself too.
They went pay to win to save themselves.
Yeah, that's true.
You know, I mean, that's...
That's scary as shit.
That's scary as shit.
Please don't call 2012 ancient.
2012 was 14 years ago.
Fourteen years ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The Matrix came out in the late 1900s.
That's true.
That's true.
Justaces 159 with five euros said absolutely random question.
What's up?
In creating MMORPG, what's his legit number of players to be in one place?
BQs it basically changes everything.
50, 100.
Honestly, it changes everything completely, like depending on what you want to do,
depending on how you want your game to be structured,
five people could be fun, or a hundred people could be fucked.
You can get really mass environments, so you go look at like PlanetSide.
PlanetSide is a shitload of players all at once, right?
You can look at Foxhole, shitload of players all at once.
We can also look at something like World of Warcraft, where you have five man
content in dungeons, right?
So like it really comes down to what do you want that experience to be for the
player and how do you want that to be managed and how do you want them to group
up for it or, you know, how, what can your performance, you know, what can your
client performance actually do?
What kind of computer is going to run on?
Cause one of the things you do with an MMO, one of the things you always
sort of think about is how do I get this bitch to run on a potato?
That's it.
That's like the, that is one of the biggest factors for your MMO to
succeed or not.
Can it run on a potato?
Because the more potato that it can run on,
the more players you get to have.
And MMOs are built or broken
on the amount of player base that you can attain.
And if you cut out the entire 30% bottom of PC owners,
you lose every time, right?
So like you have to push for performance first
or you just cut out your whole user base, man.
It's why a lot of MMOs use things like cartoony graphics
or simplified graphics in a way
because you keep all of those lower end players, lower end PC players, right?
And that's an important thing.
It's a very important distinction for that.
So like, think about it, think about that, think about that as the primary.
How do you keep a whole bunch of players?
And then you go from there and you try and figure it out.
What is this?
The A's.
Caramac with 500 bits said I've dropped a ping into stream chat with the co-homecoming
February Finances link as well as a screenshot of the donation page as it looks right now,
as it asked for a log-in to view.
I think the actual pirates could do well to terrorize the city of villains because I do
love that game and I think people who never played it before might find they too enjoy
it.
Also, I just checked my install folder, the game is like 5 gigs.
That's totally reasonable just to check out a free MMO. I actually used to play city of villains
I never played city heroes
I played city of villains a lot and I really enjoyed it and I had to deal with a bunch of like
Mechanical spider arm shit. It's very fun to play. I really really enjoyed that and I am I
Want to know can we play city of villains on there's the only city of heroes?
What are your thoughts in Star Trek online? I actually played it and I didn't enjoy it
I think it's a little too clunky for me. That's all. I don't think it's a bad game
I just think it's it's very old, you know, it's both. Hmm. What ammo game are we looking for next?
likely going to be chrono odyssey and cinder city. Those are the two really big ones right now.
And I'm excited for both of those. I'm really excited for both of those. Cinder city is
something I've been waiting for a long time. It was called project LLL before it's from NC
soft. It looks freaking phenomenal. I didn't know it had been renamed Cinder city, but I'm
super down for that. And then the other one is chrono odyssey, which I haven't had a
a chance to play but looks very compelling to me. So that's quite cool. Has
bitcraft bitcraft is really good. I would check it out because it gets good
reviews and then bad reviews and then good reviews and bad reviews and like blah
blah blah right so like I don't know I don't know where it is right now but it
was fun every time I played it. Ashes is dead it's done yes yep yep it's done
it's absolutely done they're done so.
Amphion's on your radar it's not really on my radar I actually don't know much
about it. I don't know anything about that. PAX Day also kind of, I don't know anything about it.
When I played it, it was like really, really beta and there wasn't really a lot going on, so...
Justbac's 159 with 5 euros said absolutely random question.
In creating MMORPG, what's his legit number of players to be in one place?
Oh, we already have this.
It's a rerun. Don't worry, you're always going to be in the queue. Your message will never get
lost and for those of you who are new or you don't know how my TTS system works,
It's kind of unique. I wrote it in Streamerbot. But the idea is that every time I hit that button,
it takes your message and it puts it into a queue. And we can go grab this queue right here.
We'll go look at pending actions. There's only these ones left. So when I click on this,
it eats it. And then it dumps that into Discord in the Answer TTS channel with a timestamp
and a picture of your face, whatever your, you know, icon is for that stuff.
And I answer your question. And then I keep the money. If I don't answer your question
By the end of the stream, I don't deserve the money, so don't keep it.
Instead, we put it into this thing called the debt tracker.
And the debt tracker actually stores exactly how much money,
you know, it was how much you donated.
And then I give that to charity and I post all the receipts in here.
So far we've given $66,805 to charity using the system.
And that's it.
That's the whole deal for that.
So yeah, you guys rock.
Overlord Lowpacker said at Parate Software I was away when you answered my statement.
While you're right what's happening with Ashes is on a whole issue it feels it's only possible
because people are able to charge for unfinished games.
No, I don't even think it's that man, cause like you have to understand something.
If you can have a game that is fully owned and operated and built and developed by the
dev team, right, and they can only make it so far they can get in early access
and then they can build it with the community from there.
Generally, that game is going to be in a better place
because of player feedback.
And it's going to be in a better place
because it's fully on and operated by the devs.
If you then say, you can't sell that,
you need to get investors to reach the finish line,
do you think you're going to get a better game?
And I would say largely the answer would be no.
So I think what it should be is instead of any one
of us saying this business practice is restricted
in terms of that, is you should choose
and you should vote with your wallet.
If you are uncomfortable with a game that's in early access
or you're uncomfortable with a game that's in alpha,
do not buy it.
You make the decision for yourself
instead of you making the decision for everyone
because they should be free to make their own decisions.
["The Star Trek"]
GameBaseel said,
"'Hello Goblin Daddy, there's an MMO junkie
"'and a Star Trek fan, I'd be interested to hear
"'your thoughts on Star Trek online.
"'I haven't played it in years,
But it was one of my favorites back when I did play.
The ship-to-ship combat was so fun that I didn't care about much else.
Anyway, good luck escaping the time loop.
Kink regards.
Oh, also, for Overlord again, the one I was talking earlier,
if you had your way in terms of that direction, we wouldn't have Hytale.
And that would be a massive loss to the entire modding community and everyone else involved.
I really don't think that it's as black and white as you've posed it.
It is much more nuanced. That is important to understand.
Yeah. If you're talking about this as an emo junkie, Star Trek fan.
I, I've played Star Trek online. I think it's pretty clunky. Um,
it also was kind of weird.
It feels like it's just the sandbox now. Like when I,
when I jumped into it,
everybody kind of had a bunch of ships and like everything was kind of
played out. There was no, there was no rush for progression. Right.
It's one of the reasons I like social sandbox games because there's always
lost. There's always a rush for progression. You never have your sand castle
forever, there's never like an Eiffel Tower that you've built, you know, or an Ivory Tower
that you've built. Someone can always take it away. And that because that it's constant
struggle, it's constant strife. It's why I like social sandbox MMOs. Standard MMOs,
you reach the end eventually, especially if there's no more develop developing going
on social sandbox, they could leave the game set the same forever, you will never
win, right? There's always someone to fight. I think that's really fun
for me.
Colla Kongon said hello Mr. PP Soft.
They're there chap.
Chin up.
We go again, but with a different game this time.
Next year you will celebrate your 40th rotation around the sun.
Let's talk about that instead.
No, you son of a bitch.
Justbases159 with 5 euros said so what is actual good monetization?
We are creating game using resources from iCompany Devs.
I want game to be F2P, but still assets not free.
You can make a game free to play.
You can do that.
There's a lot of different ways to make games free to play
and still monetize them correctly.
I'll give an example.
I play honker-star-rail.
That's something I like to do.
I like playing that game,
and it is a gotcha game, heavily monetized.
I have only ever given them $10, ever.
And the reason I did that
is because I played through the game
and I played until they gave me an ad.
And they gave me an ad. And then I closed it and I was like, okay,
if they pop up another ad for the game on me, but like, buy this thing,
I will on and sell the game. And they never did.
I ended up playing 200 hours. And when I got to that 200th hour,
I was like, you know what? I feel respected as a player.
I don't want to, I don't need to buy something.
I don't feel pressured to buy something. I'm going to, to support them.
And so I did and I spent $10.
And I feel the exact same way with things like Path of Exile.
What feels, what is the best monetization is what you personally feel comfortable with.
Do you feel respected as a player?
Do you feel pressured to buy the thing?
Do you have a sense of fear of missing out unless you buy the thing?
Can you not overcome the next challenge unless you buy something?
You have to think about this when this is happening.
You have to be cognizant and present in your own decisions to determine what is
correct for you, right?
That's important for that.
$10 ago at free. No, there was no real ads. It was just advertising its own shit.
It was just 10 bucks for like it. I think it was a character.
It was like a polls on a character. So it was, but like,
this is, this is the most important thing for that is you have to figure that
for you. I'll give you one of my standards.
If I'm playing a phone game and that phone game pops up in advertisement on
me out of nowhere, I uninstall the game before the ad finishes.
No matter what, even if I was having fun with it,
even if I've played it for a while, it doesn't matter.
If it pops up an ad in the middle of my gameplay, ever, it's gone.
That is my line in the sand, right?
And I think that you should form for you what things you are comfortable with in terms of monetization,
and then make decisions with that.
Follow your own guide, and determine what that guide is,
because it's based on your subjective opinion of how games should be,
and how games should be monetized.
And if you can choose that for yourself, then you're fine.
You don't need to choose it for anyone else.
or how other people play games or how they get monetized,
it matters how you do.
That's what's important.
So do that.
Can your Wi-Fi off the Maraids?
Hell yeah.
Curdow with 50 Swedish Krona
said I want to eventually create an MMO.
Being the sole individual financing the whole ordeal,
how soon should I tell my players about the board?
Well, based on Stephen, right?
as a as a good example when to do this you need to wait 10 full years in
development keep producing lackluster results maybe put out some patches that
you then revert 20 minutes later take three hours to put the patch up in
another two hours to take the patch back down that's that's key piss off the
entire player base alienate all of your content creators and then only
then when everything is the grimace when it's the worst possible moment
just take a shit right on the desk and right from the board in finger pay
it's a really good example I think
Darkard Saar said I'm excited to see the stuff you are working on for Hytale
Thanks man
Unfortunately with a job change mid last year I don't catch the streams as often
That's okay
Any good resources for developing mods for it
I have an idea I want to take for a spin, but it's a lot to look at.
Yeah, here.
Hytale modding.
If you go to Hytale modding.dev,
this resource is actually put out by members of the community and also by the
developers of Hytale itself.
They actually just put up all the NBC documentation recently and you can
actually look through literally everything meticulously documented.
No cloud music.
But yeah, with that, it's it's wild, dude.
So like, Hytale modding.dev is gonna give you everything, everything.
Now more Clamnus.
It's great.
Nova Polaris said Champions Online, a game I love, has continued going for a while,
and now that it's under Decker and now that Jack Emmett is back,
I hope it can actually get new content again more than just maintenance mode
and the new costume parts they regularly add.
That's cool.
DECA is already already working on a new game system for it and that really surprised me.
Yeah, no that's cool. That sounds like it's breathing new life into it, that's great man. Hell yeah. Glad to hear that.
Hoosier Tony said I have been playing MMORPG since 2004 with Ragnarok online on dial-up, switched to Lineage 2, then a WoW for 1.6, on a patch IARC.
I've played niche MMOs like Requiem, Cabal, Sword of the New World, did my first GM stint in Rune of Magic.
The only MMORPG I've spent more time in than WoW is FFXIV and all the others I have played but Ragnarok are shut down because MMORPGs are difficult to make yes, but more difficult to manage well.
Make games like Paseo 1, Ragnarok, something simple but fun.
Yeah. Yeah no I agree with that. Simple games are fun man. I really agree with that.
Yeah, I mean, like for me, our first game is a really simple game.
It's a Champions of Breakfast arcade thing.
I had a blast making that, man.
That was super fun.
I really enjoyed that.
And I think making simple games is very fun to do.
And I think it's cool, you know, and you get to make something fun and people can just pick it up and go for it.
When did RO shut down? I have no idea.
Yeah, simple. It's a simple game. It is a simple game. Yeah, and it's nice that way.
And I don't think that's ever a problem, right?
Yeah, something simple, but fun.
I think it's a big one.
RO is still going, is it?
Is it actually?
Right now it's your first.
Private servers are just ran better.
Oh, that's grim.
Yeah.
Wait, what is this meme?
Are you edge-learning in my chat?
Can someone at AOC download the source files and distribute it?
No, dude, no, none of that.
That would that would be a felony. I know I know you want to be like, you know, get them
Right, but like I'm gonna be honest with you
That is not a thing that you want to ascribe to right. You're not gonna get vengeance or shit like that
Right. It's not it's not that deep. It's it's a shit-ass thing that Steven did
And it's a shit way that some of the dev team act, right?
You don't need to like be the Batman to solve this situation
You just gotta be like, wow, those people suck ass.
I'm gonna make sure not to play any games
that they're involved in in the future
and I'm gonna move on, right?
Don't sit there and like fill up your organs with garbage,
freaking out over this shit forever.
I'm pissed because I've supported the game
for the last five years
and I was misled by Stephen, right?
We didn't know there was a board.
We didn't know that.
We thought as far as Stephen told us for everyone,
that he was bankrolling all of it.
He bankrolled it all.
And as such, he was beholden to no one, right?
So I'm pissed about that.
You know what I'm gonna do with it?
Get angry for one full day.
That's what I did today.
I talked about it all day.
I'm gonna put a video out so that people know
how I feel about it,
instead of just assuming how I feel about it
as the internet does,
because the internet is insufferable
and has no idea how to ask a question.
They wanna impose the reality and shit.
And then from there, I'm going to go tomorrow
and I'm not gonna talk about that shit anymore.
And if anyone asks, I go, there's the video, and I just walk away.
And then, I get to do other shit and enjoy it.
Will we ever see you hell dive again?
I've played it on the stream a couple of times, yeah.
Sony walked back through dog shit decision to restrict it in different
regions around the world for no reason.
So I promised that I would play it again when that happened, and I did.
Yeah.
When was the last time I played it?
Hell divers.
November 2025. Yeah, I love her. I like that game. I want to play monster hunter wilds
somewhere. I think I think it's a good palette cleanser. I want to see I want to see the update
that they made that improve performance. People are saying it's amazing. So excited for it.
So play hell devils can't stop. Don't know why it's because you can be part of something
greater than yourself. And I love that about it. I think hell devils does a very
good job of showing you you can be together to do a thing about that. Yeah, love it.
A fire said another MMO you might want to take a peek at is RYZOM. It's an old one,
but I think you would like the way they do all of the character abilities. It's basically
writing custom scripts for every ability, spell that gets dynamic resource cost based
upon what aspects you choose. It's not for everyone though, and it isn't free
but it is on steam.
Yaw 7.
What the shit am I looking at?
Dude I don't want all these ads, I want to see your game.
Show me the game.
These are super weird looking creatures.
Okay, we'll say something. I don't like their advertisement. And the reason why is because
I'm not actually seeing what the game is. I'm seeing a lot of models and kind of like standing
around, but I'm not seeing what the gameplay is. Does that make sense? In either of these
videos, I don't quite understand what they're doing. I may play this just to find out
because if you think it's really cool, then I want to understand. You think Josh
Stripe Haze has a worse than the Mo on this one. Was it bad or did he think it was cool?
The gameplay is mad. It's got very unique bottles. I give them that. I quite looks quite interesting
and it is, you know, chunky or art but like whatever. If the gameplay is cool, the gameplay
is cool. I'd want to check it out. It's free to play. Maybe I will. Yeah, maybe I will.
I mean, what's the worst that I could lose an hour of my time because it was free?
Whatever. Right. I'm checking out. Get a new experience. The way that I always approach
games like this to be clear because I build games. I like playing a bad game. I like playing
a game that may not be perfect, right? Because then I learned like, Hey man, I liked that
or I didn't like that. Why did I not like that? Why did I like that? Can I learn something
from that? Maybe I'll never build a system that way. And I never even thought about
building a system that way. But now I know it works or it doesn't work, you know?
Yeah, systems design shit. That's really helpful. You have up to two hours to
so free fun. It's free. Rift was pretty cool. You know what Rift's flaw was? You know what
Rift's major flaw was? When you left the main town in Rift in the very beginning, there
was like a Rift like right out in front and you could just go there and level all the
way to max level and you never had to go anywhere else ever. So everyone just went
to like the closest Rift and we all just stood there and like leveled up and that
was it until you got to maximum level. Yeah, you did that exactly. So the rest
Most of the world was just empty.
That was like the big mistake that I saw when the game was like, what are you doing?
You have to lock out content eventually, everyone just piles up right here and then never leaves.
Yeah.
And you PBB'd about to go to S.A.
This guy said, K4, I miss about half your streams and wanted to check in.
Did you ever check out the archive in between when you were talking about SCP and stuff
the other day?
No.
The archive in between?
Or just the archive?
not checked the set Oh that looks sick, no I'm super down already.
A case processing unit.
Class if I've forgotten reports and cover hidden patterns no I'm digging this.
Yeah right.
I may play this on stream Wish listed thank you.
Rightbar0 said Technoblade once had the second worst thing ever to happen to those orphans
in his Twitter bio.
Every time you steal from them I think he must be so proud of you.
Just like you steal from them right now.
I'm not stealing from the orphans.
Oh my god I'm not stealing from orphans.
Overlord Lopaca said sorry I'm a slow typer.
Vote with you wallet as a concept sounds nice but it doesn't work.
Yes it does.
Somebody know how to slowly move the goalpost on things.
Just look at pay to win, in the beginning everyone hated it, but it was slowly added
until people now just accept it as is.
The quality of games has changed wildly in the name of making money and while what I'm
saying would stop good games I feel a line needs to be made that's not just on the individual.
You're looking at it at that point as somebody who is fighting the entirety of it for others,
right?
I'm looking at it as a person of, I understand that that's a business model and if people
want to engage in that because some people like that then I'm going to let them
and I'm just not going to engage in it.
The reason why for this is because of global interests.
For instance, I hate Peter Wynn, I think it's shit.
But in Korea, in South Korea, somewhat in Taiwan and in China, it's not only a standard,
it's demanded by players.
They want that.
And I think that you have to understand that in different cultures around the world,
they have different interests in how games should be monetized to them.
So if you say things like that, of like, no, I demanded this way, you're saying it because
culturally you come from an area of the world where it's not accepted.
And culturally, other places in the world love pay to win.
I hate it, but also I grew up in America, right?
And because of that, culturally, I don't really align with pay to win mechanics.
But in Korea, in Taiwan, in SEA overall, right, there are a lot of countries where
that not only a standard but seen as a status symbol. If you buy the big expensive thing,
it's a big deal. Good example, this is League of Legends. They sold that one skin for $500.
That made a million dollars in four hours in South Korea because buying it showed people
you quote weren't poor. Yeah, and you say that's tragic, but that's their cultural
standard for it. And who the hell am I to get in the way of that shit? Right?
If you want to do that, that's your money, man. That's your money. And like,
I'm not going to do that shit, but I don't want to dictate what you're
doing with your money. Right? And I love the idea of this. I understand you have
ideals. If you want to change the industry and you want to get rid of
these types of mechanics, you don't like that. You think it's bad for
everyone, but that's not my problem for those people. Right? If they want to
do that. That's fine. You say, law, that's not to pay to win. That one is not pay to win.
When we're talking about pay to win mechanics, go look at Korean games. There's a shitload
of Korean games that use massive grind and then pay to win to get ahead of the grind.
It's very common over there. Super common. I play a lot of Korean MMOs. Love that shit.
But like to be real with you, I don't engage in pay to win. I just like non pay
to win mechanics, but that's a personal belief. And I don't think that getting
up on a soapbox to demand someone else does something else with their money makes
any sense to me, man. I just don't. If you want to spend your money like that, man,
I wouldn't, but if you want to, that's yours, right? And I'm not going to think
you're a piece of shit for doing it. I'm just not. And I, I don't think that you're
getting, you know, abused or anything for doing that. You chose fully chose to do
that, right? I fully chose to do this to, you know, go buy this game. And I had
a great time at it. I still hate Stephen for lying, right? I hate this shit.
pisses me off, but I still enjoyed my time in that and spent thousands of hours
having a good time playing games with you guys. For me, it's fine, right? And I went
into it, I went into this knowing that this game may never exist because it was
alpha and being like, okay, the cost analysis for me is I'm probably gonna get
more enjoyment out of this than I'm spending in dollars. And that's it. You
knew who it was like. No, I didn't dude. We talked about this shit all the
time. Like the worst thing about this man is he said in this, the board began directing actions that
could, you know, I could not ethically agree with. He never said that shit before. Every single person
or every single time he talked about this, he was bankrolling it. He was the guy at the top of the
chain. No one could tell him what to do. And then suddenly he's got a board that's taking
pressure away, like taking control away from him. That's bullshit. And it pisses me off. I've
I've been talking about it all day. It makes me really mad, dude.
Also, Vail, I know it's easy to like when someone is coming in and saying like
some bombastic shit to be like, oh, they're a bot or a troll or anything like
that, that dude might actually just believe that dude. Like this guy,
Steelmong, you said you were in the rug pole, Steelmong, let me present this
to you, right? So you were in on the rug pole. Obviously a wild statement.
Do you have any proof for that? Or are you just stating these things
because you feel that way? Cause you're just mad about something.
And if you have proof for it, I would love for you to present it, right?
So like I'm not gonna treat you like shit. I'm not gonna call you an asshole. I'm not gonna do any of that
I would love for you to explain this. I'm gonna put the burden of proof on you
The proof is you're in your dick writing. What have I dick wrote? I
Spent the entire last 13 hours
Shitting on intrepid and showing logs of doing so
Please clip to me the dick writing
Ten years in velvet only two zones. It didn't have only two zones
We got to be factual about the things we're upset about what do you mean two zones what?
It seems like you may have gotten third-party information on this
You see this is what I'm talking about is you've got you've got this dude steelmong that's coming in here
spouting a bunch of anger doesn't seem to be fully informed about the game and is
just blaming me for something that doesn't make any sense I get that you
want to be mad but right now you are only mad because you were angry not
because you were invested in this or informed about it maybe stop do
some for yourself.
SteelMog, like I said before, show me the clip.
Lunari rose with 500 bits said at Parade Software after you did that habitat for humanity fundraiser
a while back, it gave me the idea to volunteer at one of their local shelters.
Over the course of last year I fostered and bottled fake neonatal kittens, one
One litter had ringworm, and adding two to my family, who are now incredibly spoiled and
loved, living the best life I can give them.
That's awesome man, what a boss.
I'm really glad to hear that, Din.
100%.
Justaces159 with 5 euros said HardicaMMORPG, F2P, still, devs need salaries.
Adding P2W items is out of the question.
Agree.
Cosmetic sounds like prayer, need ideas to sell board.
Yeah, I mean, like cosmetics are fine, but you run into this weird slippery slope, right?
And like the slippery slope is that you'll have a dev team that is assigned just to making cosmetics,
and eventually they're going to make the coolest cosmetics.
They're going to make cooler cosmetics than the rest of the game can get.
I think the best system I've seen is actually Warframe.
The way that they do it is they have this thing called Tenogen.
And Tenogen is they'll have like an artist go and make something.
The artist puts it up, people vote on this.
And then if they vote yes, we're going to put that in the game.
They put it in the game and the artist gets 30% of all the sales in perpetuity without
have to deal with anything from the business.
They just get a check, man, just get a check every month.
And I think that's a really positive and powerful thing.
All of this is good because it's community driven interest.
It's supporting small creators.
It's supporting artists.
Everybody wins here, man.
Everybody wins here.
And I think that's very powerful, you know, and that's good.
Yeah, that's really good.
Does this person have a point when you're talking about Apex? Which person then?
Don't beg post. Don't beg posting.
Outer Worlds 2 has so many core armor pieces that no transmog system obsesses you so much.
Oh, that sucks. Yeah.
MacAttack1421 with 1000 bits said isn't it possible there may not have been a board until recently.
If AOC sold off the debt, all the debt holders did, they could have been the victim of a hostile takeover thus having a board installed.
How would they sell off their debt if Steven didn't do it if he's the game director and controller of the company?
See, that narrative doesn't work.
And the reason why is because as we pulled up on all the documents today, it was Stephen
and John Moore or the controllers of the entire company.
He was the CEO and the secretary for it.
And then John Moore was the chief financial officer.
How could he possibly have sold that to somebody else accidentally and then had a hostile
taker that doesn't make any sense?
Like he had to made some dumb bullshit.
He had to say he had to do some stupid shit and then lie about it to us.
Even if it wasn't there until recently, he never disclosed that to anyone.
He just silently did it.
And from one of the devs that I talked to today, the board was implemented six months
ago.
None of us were informed of this.
That is something you should inform your players of, because a lot of us bought the
game specifically into the notion that Steven was the one at the top of the chain and
the only one that could make decisions on the game.
A lot of us were sick of seeing private investors or massive corporations go and push directions
into shitty like push games into shitty directions because they didn't care about the game. They
only cared about the profit. So we bought into Ash's creation because Stephen presented
an option that didn't have that. Someone who could bankroll something that cost hundreds
and, you know, dozens of millions of dollars, right? And suddenly that vision disappeared
as the game died when he's like the board. I don't think there's an excuse for that.
I don't think there should be an excuse for that. I think he just straight up lied
Whether it was a newly implemented thing or an old thing, either way, he's been misleading us as people.
Like, he's been misleading me as a consumer, and it pisses me off, man.
So like, I don't think I can give him an excuse for that. I don't think he gets a pass, even if it's new.
If that makes sense.
Hmm.
Gunfire Reborn is really good.
Yeah, I think it's actually awesome. Also, I finally just banned that dude because he was presented with information
I tried to meet him where he's at to have a conversation with him
And he just kept screaming insane weird shit in my chat. So
You know, eventually the guy screaming in the corner is got to be ushered away
Overlord low packer said I get what you're saying, but I just hate it. I've watched a few game companies
I grew up playing the game slowly just make worse and worse game decisions that only make them more money
but makes the game worse. I just feel like I'm watching things decline slowly, but no
one is stopping it.
You're right. I feel that. And I think that I can feel really hopeless, right? I get it.
But there are a lot of other good games out there. And the best thing that I can do,
as an individual player, and as a streamer, is to find stuff that I think is compelling
and cool, look to see business practices that make sense to me, and then kind of
support those and go in that direction. And that's what we did with Ashes. Still
got misled sucks. The thing that I've learned for the future is if I want to look into a company
be and I shouldn't have to do this as a consumer. But if I want to look into a company with a game
that's not fully finished, I'm going to go look at their UCC stuff. I'm going to go see if they
have any liens against them who their investors are talk about all that kind of stuff. And it
sucks because I have to be a bit more savvy in that direction to do research on that. And
I shouldn't have to do that. But also if I'm going to be playing that stuff on stream,
I want to do that because it means more, right? It's more meaningful because a lot of people
will be watching play the game. And so like, that's what I'm going to do in the future for this kind
of shit. And at the same time, I'm not going to stop playing early access games. I'm not going
to stop supporting developers that have really cool visions, because if you were to do that,
then you would miss out on things like Hytale. Hytale literally wouldn't exist
if they weren't allowed to release an early access version of that. And Hytale is the
greatest, greatest shining example of what the modding
community can get in terms of tooling or things like Minecraft.
If that didn't exist, that'd be awful, dude.
Like that's such a boon.
It's actually a boon, not just to people like me, but to the
entire next generation of people that are interested in creative games.
A whole generation of kids are likely going to be more interested
in programming and creativity now because they will have an
up-to-date tool that is not as clunky and hard to enter
in terms of modability, as Minecraft is.
You don't have to use a modding framework.
You just do it first party.
Think about how powerful it was when I was young
using new grounds with Flash.
Flash was so easy to get into.
It unlocked everything.
You just do animation and video games
and all kinds of shit in it.
It's phenomenal.
And now with Hytale, you're gonna have a generation
of people that can do that
in a shared multiplayer environment.
That's awesome, man.
Like, that's really cool shit.
The only thing that would make that more accessible
if it was free. And if you were against fully against ever any early access game that exists,
you wouldn't have that. So I do think there's a time and a place where it matters. I do think
there's a time and a place where it's positive. But like, you have to decide for yourself
what's your limit for you, right? And that sucks. Sometimes, sometimes you get duped,
sucks, blows ass, got duped here, I got duped here, sucks. But like,
like you can't let that Jade you against every other developer ever. You can't let that Jade
you against all of early access or all of all of that. And I think it's easy to say against
all of them. But when you really look at the the nuance for it, you look at it not so black
and white, you'll find that there's a lot of really good games that only exist today
because they went through that process and their community supported them. And they
made something really goddamn stellar. So I'll throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Bit underscore gaming said hello for and everyone on a lighter note. Have you seen the game potion night on steam?
No, it's a first potion shooter as in you shoot potions
Not a large game, but quite weird and interesting though. It costs as much as the heartbound demo sir very expensive free you go
What a weird-looking game
Okay
Dude, I love weird shit games like this.
This is red.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
You'd shit that it happens when you made friends with a guild?
I know what had happened otherwise.
Yeah, that's all I feel about it too.
Yep.
Malivia said hi there Pirates of her.
Not sure if you remember me but I am the guy whose boss name is Aligma.
Anyway sad to hear about AOC, but with everyone mentioning their favorite MMOs I would leak
to mention this overlooked gem.
Wizard101 is one of my favorite MMOs ever and can be played fully without entering the
P2W system.
No.
No.
Wizard101.
My god it all comes back to Wizard101.
Overlocked.
Can't believe you.
Sharon Underscore Graves said I'm sad that AOC is over and there's no further chance of improvement.
Mostly though I am just disappointed, not angry, just disappointed in the lack of transparency and the way in which it ended so abruptly.
There were other ways to transition things or to wind down the dream than just pulling the plug.
At the end of the day though I have a bunch of people in my life that I wouldn't have met without bashes who are well worth what I paid for the shared experience.
Oh yeah man.
We can play other things.
There.
Yeah we can play other things.
So chocolate you said you got a club you're really saying that nuance is important to you
But the issue you have is that as a critic? I think you lack nuance your discussions with tractors
Can you do you have a specific example instead of a vague post of that because I would love to talk about that
You think you can apply nuance to your own discussions and interactions with the streamers
Do you have an example of this again vague posting?
They post thing this helping I think if you want to have discussions about something you should be very specific
You should say exactly what it is that bothering you exactly what it is that you want to have a conversation about
And if you're not doing it in bad faith, then yeah, we could have a conversation about it. I don't think that's over an issue, right?
So do you have one? Or is it just vague? I don't like vague posting. Oh wrong button.
Oh, no, you're you're doing that. Yes, see there's a reason that those are banned in here because they were using that as advertisement.
Yeah, yeah, there was no way to have a conversation normally with those guys. Yep.
Yeah, if that's what you're here for, you're not going to get that, guaranteed that.
I think it changes if you want to know what's conversation between two individuals.
Nez Underscore Malaysia said is there a way we could petition you once a week to spend
like two to three hours playing a random steam game the community suggests.
I'm really interested in seeing how these games play that everyone is suggesting but
don't have time to play them all myself as I'm busy doing other stuff but usually
can have an ear pod in to listen to stream.
I think what you have to understand, Chaco, is if you want to have a conversation with other people,
another person, you want to have a nuanced conversation with them, you probably shouldn't monetize hate against them.
So, if you want to have that conversation, I won't.
Yeah, not interested.
Yep.
And that's it.
And if you want to do that, you're not going to get it here and you'll probably leave upset.
All right, with that in mind, we're at 13 hours and 20 minutes.
Let's get a head out.
Criticism isn't hate.
Criticism isn't hate.
You are either willfully ignorant or you have absolutely no idea how the internet
of today works whatsoever.
Not even a little.
Wow.
Alrighty.
Kerdal with 50 Swedish Krona said the other day a stream was talking about Hyrule and
all its lore.
Ooh.
Took me a good few hours to realize Hyrule is not about Hytale.
I never played Zelda.
Never played Zelda?
Wait what?
Hmm.
Yeah, Hyrule is not Hytale.
That's funny.
That's really funny.
83 with 500 bits said not really an MMO but an online game. I dearly miss his hell gate London
Yes, it was more a single player or land game with a chat interface pretty much an advanced Diablo
Yeah, it was still amazing. I really do miss the roaring Mac 3 car door melee
I'd have with my blade master. I love that I 100% love that honestly, you know like that's
That's a fantastic game. It was awful, but it was fantastic
I actually wrote my, um, when I, when I applied for my first QA job,
I had to write a, um, a document on like how I would test a game.
And I wrote it on Hellgate London.
That was the one that I did it for.
And it was great.
I love that game, man.
Super do.
Last from the fast man.
Yeah.
It's bad in the right ways.
I agree with it.
I super agree with it.
Yeah.
All right, guys, it's been 13 hours.
I'm going to go take a shower, go to bed.
I've been up for way too long.
So, uh, I've already put up the message for.
Shedlock Shedlock will work in the video for this and I do not ever want to talk about ashes creation again
We had a whole day of 13 hours of it. I don't give a shit anymore. It's time to move on
So happy with that post syrup video will come out. We'll be done with it
You guys have a good day. I will see you all tomorrow