Games are pressure chambers.
Rules constrain.
Time compounds.
Failure teaches faster than success.
What matters isn’t winning —
it’s what behavior a system pulls out of people.
Signal over noise.
Fantastically miserable.
It's not even 48 hours since you've gone.
I will always love you my little friend. You impacted me in ways unknown to others.
Love and miss you Roasca.
Until we meet again.
The piece of my heart you took with you will never heal.
Woke up to Ashes of Creation being shut down.
I can honestly say I'm not very surprised after this current phase on Steam. In 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.
Fast forward to this current phase on Steam and everything imploded. Tons of content that we reported as broken back in 2025 was still unfixed even if 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 was basically non-existent so players were routinely spouting racial slurs, threats, and hate speech in global all day. In any other game these people would be immediately banned.
I went to bat for Intrepid many times over the years encouraging people to give them a chance. Removing misinformation and showing the community all of the best points of the game. On a personal level I am 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.
I enjoyed my time playing Ashes with all of you regardless of the shitshow that it became. Looking forward to whatever new adventures we head out on in the future.
--2026 is a year of clarity over hype, iteration over stagnation, and observation over assumption. The creators, developers, and thinkers who thrive will be the ones who see the patterns that others overlook.
--Content creation is no longer separate from analysis. Understanding why people engage with a system is just as important as the system itself. Metrics alone don’t tell the story—behavior does.