Ashes of Creation

We rate Ashes of Creation D tier, 1.0 out of 10. Every score is 1/10 because nobody can play it today. Intrepid Studios laid off its whole staff on Jan 31, 2026, Steam stopped selling the game two days later, and the official servers and website are gone. The last playable build was a 7/10 for combat and a 4/10 for group content.

We rate Ashes of Creation D tier (1.0 out of 10). It is 1/10 in every category, because the scores on this page describe what a player can do today, and today that is nothing: Steam counted 3 players in the game when we read SteamDB on Nov 12, 2026, down from a January 2026 peak of 27,120, and the game's own address, ashesofcreation.com, showed a GoDaddy parking page the same day. The last build people could play, in January 2026, was a better game than that: we would have given it 7/10 in combat but only 4/10 in group PvE. TheLazyPeon put it in B tier in his MMORPG Tier List 2026, recorded a week before the Steam launch. We think B was a rating of the design document, and a game is only worth the servers it runs on.

We think no official Ashes of Creation server reopens and the game does not return to sale on Steam before July 2027, because the people who would have to agree on it are still in federal court against each other.

Confidence: Likely. Check by: Jul 2027.

9:27 This clip is TheLazyPeon leveling in the last playable build, in January 2026. Nothing is live now. Ashes of Creation went on sale in Steam Early Access on Dec 11, 2025 for $49.99. On Jan 31, 2026 founder Steven Sharif wrote that he had resigned "in protest" and that the board was proceeding with a mass layoff. Steam removed the game from sale on Monday, Feb 2, and Intrepid's former communications director said everyone was laid off without final paychecks, both reported by MassivelyOP on Feb 4, 2026. A California notice lists 123 jobs lost in a permanent closure (Game Developer, Feb 10, 2026). By Apr 10, 2026 MMORPG.com wrote that the game had "no servers running". It was a sandbox MMORPG built on player-run settlements, open world PvP and a player economy.

Scores

Category	Score	Why in one line
PvP	1/10	No server to fight on; the January 2026 build was about a 5
PvE	1/10	No dungeons to enter; the last build was about a 4
Solo play	1/10	No world to log in to; the last build was about a 6
Combat	1/10	Cannot be played; the last build was about a 7
Fair pricing	1/10	Not for sale, and what buyers paid for no longer runs
Population	1/10	Servers closed: 3 players on Steam, Nov 12, 2026
Overall	1.0/10, D tier	The mean of six 1s; a closed game cannot score higher

Pros and cons

Pros

The last build's combat was liked by the creator who followed it longest: abilities chained debuffs into hard crowd control.
Any class could wear any armor and use any weapon, so a mage could equip plate shoulders.
Gathered resources rolled their own rarity, and gathering and commissions gave real experience.
Settlements grew from a crossroads to a town through player work, and rivals could siege them.
Steam granted refunds to some buyers well past its usual limit, MassivelyOP's readers reported on Feb 4, 2026.

Cons

You cannot play it. There is no official server, store listing or working website.
Steam buyers paid $49.99 for a game that ran for about two months after launch.
We found no blanket refund announced by Valve, Intrepid or the court.
Backers of the 2017 Kickstarter gave over $3.2 million for a game that never left alpha.
Ownership of the game is disputed in court, and by Kira's reading a trial would not come before 2028.
Even while it ran, death in PvP destroyed a quarter of your materials and questing was buggy.

PvP: 1/10

16:51 There is no PvP to play, so the score is 1. The design had open world flagging, caravans to rob, lawless sea zones and settlement sieges. In TheLazyPeon's January 2026 review he said the death penalty was "so harsh that it makes me not want to engage in the system": a quarter of your materials deleted and a quarter lootable on every death. He also described guilds killing crate mules with low-level alts to take the cargo at no risk.

We think that build was a 5: big ideas, rules that punished fair fights. Only a server coming back would raise today's score.

PvE: 1/10

13:28 No group content can be entered. In his 2025 recap, TheLazyPeon counted what ten months of Alpha 2 had added: 11 pocket dungeons, one open world dungeon, new world events and bosses. In January 2026 he said grinding groups were usually full and hard to join. We would have given the last build a 4, since group content was thin and unfinished.

Solo play: 1/10

Nothing can be done alone either. The lead clip above shows why the last build was better here than its reviews suggested: TheLazyPeon found solo leveling "a fairly viable path" by mixing mob grinding, gathering, crafting and commissions, and reached level 20 mostly on life skills. Against that, a main quest NPC was missing for two days in his run. We would have rated it 6.

Combat: 1/10

18:10 Combat is the category where the closure costs most. "Overall, I really like the combat," TheLazyPeon said in January 2026: pressing abilities felt good, and combos upgraded debuffs into hard crowd control. Any class could use any weapon and armor. We would have rated it 7, short of the best because, in his words, of all the Unreal Engine 5 MMOs it "currently looks the worst". Unplayable, it is a 1.

Fair pricing: 1/10

The model on paper was fair: one $49.99 purchase in Early Access, cosmetics sold beside it, and a monthly subscription planned for after launch, as the Steam page still says. Court filings posted by Sharif put Steam sales at 199,493 purchases worth $8.2 million (MMORPG.com, Apr 16, 2026). Today the Steam page loads with no way to buy and reviews at 25% positive of 8,497 in English (read Nov 12, 2026). Our rule asks what money buys. Here it bought two months, so the score is 1. If you bought on Steam and have not asked for a refund, ask.

Population: 1/10

The rule gives 1 to any game whose servers are closed. For the record, SteamDB (read Nov 12, 2026) shows an all-time peak of 31,882 in December 2025, a 2026 high of 27,120 in January, 13,205 in February, 85 in March and never more than 19 in a month since April. Steam's count never saw players on Intrepid's own launcher, which no longer matters.

What creators say

0:00 TheLazyPeon covered the game for about eight years. In his March 2026 video he said the collapse "sent me on a genuine depression" and that he had scored it "a five out of 10" two weeks before. He says he was told for years that one person funded the game, and that he would have covered it "with a lot more skepticism" otherwise. He promised a Muay Thai fight as a forfeit and posted it on Sep 21, 2026. We agree with his 5 for the build. We disagree with his new rule to treat every upcoming MMO as a scam "unless proven otherwise": the narrower lesson is not to pay for an unfinished MMO whose funding you cannot see.

9:35 His B tier came with a warning that the Steam release was "probably way too early". On that he was right.

19:35 Kira (KiraTV), a long-time critic of the project, said days after the collapse that the game might return under new owners but that it is "absolutely the end for the dream of what Ashes of Creation was going to be". We agree.

2:56 In his Oct 23, 2026 update, Kira said the case is entering discovery and a trial, if there is one, would come in 2028. The two creators differ in tone: TheLazyPeon mourns the game, Kira follows the court.

On the dispute itself we take no side. An investor accused Sharif of misusing company money in claims first made to a YouTuber (MassivelyOP, Feb 14, 2026). Sharif denies it and is suing the board for, in his words, "intentionally destroying the Company" (MassivelyOP, Feb 18, 2026). Former staff have sued over the layoffs (Kotaku, Mar 6, 2026). In August the judge authorized a neutral receiver and ordered the studio's assets turned over to a custodian (MassivelyOP, Aug 12, 2026). No court has ruled on who is right.

Who should play it, and who should not

Nobody can play it, so the useful question is where its players should go. If you wanted the player-run economy and territory wars, Eve Online has run both for two decades. If you liked leveling through gathering and crafting, Old School RuneScape is the game TheLazyPeon himself went back to. ArcheAge Chronicles carries the name of the game Ashes borrowed its naval trade and sport fishing from, so read its page before assuming those systems survived. Do not buy keys or accounts for Ashes of Creation from resellers: there is no official server to use them on.

Sources

Moments

Ashes Of Creation...I Have Some Thoughts

TheLazyPeon

9:27 This clip is TheLazyPeon leveling in the last playable build, in January 2026. Nothing is live now. Ashes of Creation…
16:51 There is no PvP to play, so the score is 1. The design had open world flagging, caravans to rob, lawless sea zones and…
18:10 Combat is the category where the closure costs most. "Overall, I really like the combat," TheLazyPeon said in January…