Court documents surfaced on the Ashes of Creation subreddit confirm that Riot Games was in serious acquisition talks with Intrepid Studios, the team behind the now-defunct MMO Ashes of Creation, with an offer reportedly ranging from $250 million to $500 million.
The document in question is an email from Mark Sottosanti, Riot's chief financial officer, sent to Intrepid co-founder and CEO Steven Sharif and CFO John Moore. The offer laid out a plan to acquire Intrepid outright and "scale post-launch" as Ashes of Creation added more features over time. The language in that email even referenced supporting the game for “decades.”
What the $250 million offer actually tells us
Here's the thing: at the time of these discussions, Ashes of Creation had already been in development for roughly five years since its $3.27 million Kickstarter campaign, and the game still had not reached a publicly playable state. Riot was apparently willing to bet a quarter of a billion dollars minimum on a fantasy MMORPG that existed mostly as a pitch and an alpha.
That level of investment signals just how badly Riot wanted a foothold in the MMO space. The company has had its own League of Legends universe MMO in development for years, and the project has been notoriously slow-moving. Buying Intrepid and potentially reshaping Ashes of Creation into a Runeterra-themed experience would have been a shortcut around years of internal development headaches.
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The acquisition never went through. Ashes of Creation eventually collapsed, with Intrepid hit by mass layoffs after Sharif resigned, and Steam began issuing refunds to some backers.
The Ashes of Creation collapse and what followed
The game's failure makes this revelation hit harder. Backers had put over $3.27 million into the Kickstarter, and outside investors were apparently circling with figures that dwarfed that sum. Riot's offer was never accepted, the game never launched, and Intrepid ultimately fell apart amid allegations of financial mismanagement.
Sharif has pushed back publicly on those allegations. In a statement posted to Reddit, he said: "I know the public discourse around me, Intrepid, and Ashes of Creation has been flooded with knives-out narratives driven by a coordinated defamation campaign orchestrated by the opposing parties in my lawsuit. Do not mistake noise for truth."
The litigation surrounding Intrepid is ongoing, and the court documents containing the Riot offer emerged as part of that legal process, not as a voluntary disclosure from either company.
Riot's MMO ambitions still unresolved
For players who have been waiting on Riot's in-house MMO set in the League of Legends universe, this story is a reminder of how long that project has been in motion. The studio has brought on veterans including former World of Warcraft producers to work on it, signaling real intent. But the pace has been slow enough that at some point, the company was apparently open to just buying its way into the genre instead.
What most players miss in this story is the scale of what Riot was willing to spend. $250 million on the low end, $500 million at the top, for a game that had never shipped. That is not exploratory interest. That is a company that genuinely wanted to own the MMO space and was prepared to pay for it.
With Ashes of Creation gone and Riot's own MMO still without a release window, the League of Legends universe remains MMO-less for now. Keep an eye on our gaming news for any updates as Riot's internal project moves forward.
