Last month, the former Game Director of Ashes of Creation, Steven Sharif, filed a lawsuit in the federal courts against the Board of Directors and their affiliated entity, TFE Holdings.
Sharif shared his public statement on Ashes of Creation’s official Discord server, explaining what the lawsuit entails and the situation that led to it.
The lawsuit claims that the Board of Directors breached fiduciary duty, violated federal and state trade secret laws, and wrongfully attempted to seize Intrepid Studios’ assets (including its IP) with a manufactured insider foreclosure.
According to Sharif, this situation started in 2024, when the Board restricted Intrepid’s access to money to create a reason to foreclose the company. This would allegedly allow the Board to sell Ashes of Creation to TFE Games Holding, a company that the board members are already affiliated with.
This alleged illegal action would line the pockets of the board members while cutting off the long-term shareholders, lenders, employees, and even the Ashes of Creation community.
Sharif also claimed that the Board attempted to take Intrepid’s revenue by diverting it to a “new entity,” ignoring creditor rights. Sharif intervened and stopped this by letting the primary lender know, which prevented bank fraud.
In January, Sharif says he resigned from the company after realizing he couldn’t stop the actions of the Board, which he described as “unlawful and destructive.” Much of the senior leadership agreed with him and followed Sharif’s footsteps, resigning.
In retaliation, as Sharif reported in the past, the Board started mass layoffs at Intrepid, terminating employees and refusing them protections like pay and benefits.
Sharif alleges that the Board essentially created a smear campaign against him to pin the fallout on him. He refuted several key points of this, denying any mismanagement of funds on his end, causing the shutdown, or any other misconduct claims.
He also reiterates that Ashes of Creation was mostly financed by his own money. He acquired money from lenders with his own assets and equity on the line, taking the risk for the project onto his shoulders.
There’s more to the story that Sharif says will come out as the case continues. He claims that those on the Board of Directors (including Chair Rob Dawson, Ryan Ogden, Theresa Fette, and Aaron Bartels) have resorted to similar tactics as the ones allegedly implemented at Intrepid, leading to past legal problems.
All of this was in order to take over Ashes of Creation, according to Sharif. He cites several pieces of information to prove that Ashes of Creation was doing incredibly well and attracted the Board, including the following:
- Ashes of Creation generated $9 million in gross sales.
- Ashes of Creation reached 300,000 monthly active players, with 400,000 additional players having Wishlisted the game.
- Ashes of Creation retained roughly 76% of its peak concurrent user numbers on day 30 (which Sharif points out is a great sign, particularly in the MMORPG community and for an early access game)
As of now, Sharif (who’s also representing Intrepid Studios) has secured his first legal win. A judge in San Diego issued a temporary restraining order against the Board of Directors and its associates from “accessing, using, selling, distributing, or causing anyone to access, use, sell, or distribute the trade secrets of Intrepid.”
The judge wrote the following:
“By showing that TFE acquired the Trade Secrets Materials through an unlawful Article 9 foreclosure, Plaintiff has shown misappropriation through wrongful acquisition. This misappropriation has caused damage to Intrepid because it has been stripped of its primary assets that make up its main product.
The Court finds the balance of hardships tips sharply toward Plaintiff.”
Those who want to dig into the lawsuit themselves can do so here. You can also read Steven Sharif’s entire statement below:
“Over the past month, many of you have noticed that I have been largely silent. For a community and team that I spoke with almost daily during development, I know that silence has been unusual and difficult. It was not because I had nothing to say, quite the contrary.
From the moment this situation began to unfold, I made the decision that the place to defend my team, the company, and the community we built together would not be on Reddit threads, YouTube videos, or social media speculation. It would be in court, where the facts matter and where evidence would determine the outcome.
Last month, I filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Diego on behalf of Intrepid Studios’ shareholders against Intrepid’s Board of Directors, led by Chair Rob Dawson, and their affiliated entity, TFE Games Holdings LLC. I brought claims for breaches of fiduciary duty, violations of federal and state trade secret laws, and wrongful efforts to seize company assets, including its valuable IP, through an unlawful and manufactured insider foreclosure. My lawsuit is the result of Rob Dawson and his agents trying to dismantle the company I founded and built alongside our community, repurpose Ashes of Creation as a vehicle for their own enrichment, and shift responsibility for Intrepid’s collapse onto me through an orchestrated public campaign.
For more than a decade I poured all my resources, including millions of dollars, my health, and my sole focus into creating Intrepid and Ashes of Creation. Despite this, I resigned from Intrepid on January 19, 2026, because I was unable to prevent the wrongful decisions of the board, especially their plans to summarily fire the employees without their legally entitled pay and leaving them and their families without benefits and health insurance with little to no notice.
Now I’ve been fighting on behalf of our community and team to protect Ashes from these bad actors who gained control of the board, went rogue and abandoned both the company’s mission and their obligations in pursuit of their own interests.
Yesterday we had our first legal victory with the federal judge in San Diego, where Intrepid is based, issuing a temporary restraining order against Dawson and his associates. As the court wrote in their order:
“Defendants Robert Dawson, Ryan Ogden, Theresa Fette, Aaron Bartels, and TFE Games Holdings LLC (collectively, ‘Defendants’), along with any of their agents, are enjoined from accessing, using, selling, distributing, or causing anyone to access, use, sell, or distribute the trade secrets of Intrepid.”
Temporary Restraining Order, United States District Court for the Southern District of California, Sharif v. Dawson et al.
I’ll come back to that later because the judge’s comments are very interesting but let’s start with how this all began. It’s long but it’s important you have the facts versus the lies and misinformation that have been spread about me and Intrepid.
As alleged in the complaint, from 2024 onward the board deliberately restricted the company’s access to operating capital in order to purportedly justify a foreclosure. The foreclosure was designed to shut down Intrepid and transfer Ashes of Creation to a new entity, TFE Games Holdings LLC, affiliated with the board members.
The board did this to enable Dawson and other board members to control and sell the project for their own benefit, while cutting out Intrepid’s long term shareholders, lenders, employees, and community.
The board also tried to divert revenues owed to Intrepid to the new entity, while disregarding clear creditor rights. I alerted the primary lender of this wrongful plan, preventing bank fraud.
Let me be clear, I have received none of these revenues myself despite lies stating otherwise.
The Board was also behind the termination of all Intrepid employees without the protections they were owed, including pay and benefits. I strongly objected to and opposed these decisions, along with other senior leadership at the Studio.
On January 19, 2026, I resigned from the board when it became clear that I could do nothing to prevent the board from its chosen course. I am now fighting to protect Ashes of Creation from a board that abandoned the company’s mission and acted against the interests of its employees, investors, and community.
Yesterday, a federal court in the Southern District of California intervened and issued a Temporary Restraining Order blocking TFE and the current board from accessing or interfering with the company’s assets and critical services.
The order preserves Intrepid’s assets and prevents further disruption from Rob Dawson, Ryan Ogden, Theresa Fette, Aaron Bartels, or their agents.
The court’s intervention underscores the seriousness of the issues raised in the complaint and ensures that the company’s assets cannot be further harmed, dismantled, or transferred.
Judge Lopez wrote in the Order Granting Temporary Restraining Order (U.S. District Court, Southern District of California):
“By showing that TFE acquired the Trade Secrets Materials through an unlawful Article 9 foreclosure, Plaintiff has shown misappropriation through wrongful acquisition.”
Unfortunately, the damage caused by the board’s actions has already been severe. A company that had spent more than a decade building a game and a community was abruptly shut down, employees were terminated without pay or benefits, and years of work were thrown into uncertainty.
The impact on the people who dedicated their careers to this project, and on the players who supported it, cannot be overstated.
The court further explained in its order:
“This misappropriation has caused damage to Intrepid because it has been stripped of its primary assets that make up its main product.”
I am now fully committed to holding the individuals responsible for this tragedy accountable and to preventing any further harm to the company or its assets, and to making the team and the players whole.
What was done to our community and to the team who poured their blood sweat and tears into making Ashes, was unconscionable.
I recognize something else that has been difficult for many of us to watch over the past month. Ashes of Creation has always had skeptics and critics. That comes with attempting something ambitious in a space as challenging as MMORPG development.
But the past several weeks have felt like a victory lap for many of those skeptics, people celebrating what they believe is the end of a project they doubted from the beginning.
What makes that narrative especially frustrating is that the project itself was demonstrating real momentum, real value.
As outlined in the Complaint, this is precisely why Dawson and the Board took actions to steal the main asset, Ashes of Creation, from Intrepid.
When Ashes launched early access in December 2025, the response from players dramatically exceeded expectations.The game generated nearly $9 million in gross sales, reached roughly 300,000 monthly active players, had approximately 400,000 additional players on the wishlist, and millions of registered accounts.
Most importantly, the game achieved an approximate 76% peak concurrent user retention rate on day 30, a statistic that is extraordinarily rare in the MMORPG genre, particularly for an early access environment.
Both before and after the unnecessary and unlawful shutdown, in furtherance of their plan to steal Ashes and discredit me, Dawson and related individuals began working to shift responsibility for these decisions onto me.
The misinformation and false narratives being circulated by the board and proxies like Jason Caramanis must be answered with the facts.
I categorically deny accusations suggesting that I mismanaged company funds, caused the company’s shutdown, or engaged in any misconduct. Those claims attempt to rewrite the events that actually occurred and divert attention away from the decisions the Board and its cronies made.
The truth is that I refused to participate in actions I believed were unlawful and destructive to the company, its investors, its employees, and its future.
Since the shutdown I have been fighting as hard as I possibly can, in court, to show that the Board’s actions were wrongful and to fight for the rights and interests of the developers, shareholders, and the player community.
There has also been significant speculation online about how Ashes of Creation was financed. From the beginning I said that I was personally financing the project, and that statement is accurate.Much of the capital provided to the company came through lenders who extended financing based on my personal guarantees and the collateralization of my own assets and equity.
The risk was mine personally. If the project failed, those obligations did not disappear, they were my responsibility.
I put my own financial future on the line to build this project and keep it alive for as long as possible.
As this case progresses, the broader backgrounds and histories of the individuals involved on the board, and their prior litigation history, will also come under scrutiny. Some of the people responsible for these decisions have previously been involved in other legal disputes describing similar tactics and conflicts as the one they created here.
Those records will become part of the broader story of how this situation unfolded and how the board approached its efforts to take control of the company and the game.
The court filings on the record now are only the beginning of the information that will emerge in this case. Internal communications, board records, financial documentation, and other materials will be in issue as the litigation progresses.
Those records will provide a far more complete picture of the decisions made, who made them, and how the events leading to the shutdown of Intrepid actually unfolded.
As the court put in their order yesterday:
“The Court finds the balance of hardships tips sharply toward Plaintiff.”
Filing this case in federal court was not a step I took lightly, but it ultimately became the only path left to bring the facts into the open and seek accountability for what has happened, against the people responsible.
The court’s initial order preserving the company’s valuable IP underscores the seriousness of the issues involved.
What has been most painful to watch is the attempt to rewrite the story of this project while the people who actually dreamed it, worked for it, and built it have been pushed aside, and in my case, threatened, defamed, and unfairly blamed.
Ashes of Creation was never just a corporate asset to flip. It was ten years of work by hundreds of developers and the belief of a community that helped bring it to life.
What happens next will ultimately be decided in court. But I will not allow the work of hundreds of developers and the belief of millions of players to be erased by a small group of individuals who attempted to take control of something they did not create.
As we started to see in San Diego federal court yesterday, those responsible will face real accountability.
Sincerely,
Steven Sharif”
