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Apparently, the $ 3,270,000+ the now-defunct MMO Ashes of Creation raised on Kickstarter was chump change compared to the money on the table from outside investors. Namely, Riot Games, which reportedly offered a huge sum for the game, according to its director, Steven Sharif.
The information comes from a court document posted on the Ashes of Creation subreddit. It contains a copy of an email from Riot to Sharif, who was co-founder and CEO of Intrepid Studios, and John Moore, the company's CFO. The outfit behind League of Legends was humoring an acquisition of Intrepid and the fantasy MMORPG, for a total sum of between $250-and-$500 million.
No, seriously, it's there in black and white. It's written that the plan was to "scale post-launch" as more features and concepts were added to Ashes of Creation. It's probably worth reminding you that at this point, the game was five years out from the Kickstarter, but hadn't actually become publicly playable yet.
Court Document confirming Riot were looking into purchasing/investing into Intrepid/Ashes for "$250m-$500m" from r/AshesofCreation
Clearly, Sharif and Moore were very good at pitching their vision to investors, given the amount of money that was on the table. Mark Sottosanti, the chief financial officer of Riot, sent the offer, and it's unclear how much more in-depth this discussion ran.
Riot's had a League-themed MMO in the works for years, and perhaps the intention was to just buy this and turn it into something Runeterra-themed? Who knows. Ultimately, of course, it never went through.
It's mentioned that the plan was to support Ashes of Creation for "decades," just to further compound the optimism surrounding this project. Sharif provided a statement on the ongoing litigation surrounding Intrepid's alleged misappropriation of funds.
"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," he says. "Do not mistake noise for truth."
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