Ashes of Creation's $12M Allegedly Misused by Founder

Over $12 million taken from Intrepid Studios' accounts, allegedly unaccounted for. That's the claim at the centre of NefasQS's newest report, a detailed video published on April 11 that purports to have obtained and processed Intrepid Studios' complete general ledger spanning 2015 to 2026.

Ashes of Creation was pulled from Steam in February following a sudden studio collapse that left employees without final paychecks. What followed was a public legal fight between former CEO Steven Sharif and Intrepid's board of directors, with investor Jason Caramanis accusing Sharif of diverting funds meant for the studio. Sharif, for his part, has blamed the board for the game's collapse and denied any misconduct. The back-and-forth made it almost impossible to know who to believe. The ledger, if accurate, shifts the weight of that argument considerably.

What the Ledger Actually Claims

NefasQS compiled the full data into a publicly available Google Sheets document, and the line items make for grim reading. There are payments to a personal chef who, according to former employees cited in the video, never once cooked at the studio and only worked at Sharif and his husband John Moore's private residence. Employees were reportedly told the chef couldn't cook on-site due to a commercial kitchen permit issue. There's $41,717 spent at historical auction sites, a $421.91 charge at a luxury cigar retailer, and tens of thousands across trading card game and miniature figurine storefronts. There's even over $700 charged to Fortnite, listed under R&D.

The single most serious allegation involves a company called Gore Oil, which the ledger shows received $81,166 in payments. Gore Oil Company was the deed owner of a San Diego mansion sold to Sharif and Moore in April 2020 for $4.9 million. NefasQS doesn't claim that payment directly funded the house purchase, but the connection between a company-funded payment and the deed owner of the CEO's personal property is exactly the kind of detail that tends to end up in front of a judge.

NefasQS states the ledger was verified against multiple sources and interviews with former Intrepid employees. That's a meaningful qualifier. This isn't anonymous forum speculation; it's a documented financial record cross-referenced with people who were actually there. Whether it holds up in court is a separate matter entirely, but the specificity here is hard to dismiss.

The Pushback Came Fast

Within hours of the video going live, someone filed a privacy complaint against it on YouTube. NefasQS addressed it directly in a pinned comment: "Someone already filed a privacy complaint against this video, just a heads up but we will be disputing it. Someone also reported my Reddit account from our community subreddit to the admins." NefasQS did not name who filed the complaint.

Sharif has been silent since March 19, when he posted a flexing arm emoji on Ashes of Creation's official Discord, following a statement on March 6 about his "first legal victory" over the board in the United States District Court of Southern California. His March 6 post said he would only defend himself in court going forward. So far, he's kept to that.

The Kickstarter that launched Ashes of Creation raised $3.2 million from backers who believed they were funding an ambitious MMORPG. What the ledger alleges is that a significant portion of the money flowing through Intrepid Studios over a decade ended up somewhere other than the game. The legal proceedings in the Southern California district court will ultimately determine what's provable, but the ledger is now public.