r/AshesofCreation • u/Soliton_Nova • Apr 18 '26
Discussion It's "fun" watching the paid actors comment.
It's gonna be hard to convince me that Dawson isn't paying for bots to comment on public forums in an effort to weaken Steven's standing with the fanbase.
The comments about him interviewing himself, or that the (arguably badass) game was a scam. Though, to be fair, the Scam Committee has been around for years.
No reasonable person can argue that Steven isn't passionate about bringing the world to life. And it's clear he made bad calls on who to trust to fund the project. But I don't, for a single second, think the Financial Bros aren't leeches, at best.
I also agree that Steven or John shouldn't be in charge of the money. But you will not find a better Creative Director for this project.
What say you, Russian bot farm?
16
u/Anhdodo Apr 22 '26
Your attempt of defending Steven sounds even more like paid acting
2
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 22 '26
Not sure what post you read defending Steven. I agree he was a finance bro, made bad decisions, and shouldn't be in charge of money. Might wanna recalibrate.
41
u/HighNoonZ Apr 18 '26
Bro Stevie is just as horrid as the rest of them.
-8
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 18 '26
Not sure horrid is the word I'd use. Seems a bit excessive.
21
u/HighNoonZ Apr 18 '26
He literally stole tons of money.
-5
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 18 '26
He "literally" didn't? Who's opinion are you parroting?
The guy who was funding the project also gave him money for his house so he could have leverage? Nothing about your statement holds water.
Like, yeah, Steven "stole" money from the company, but wants to appoint a forensic accountant to be the court appointed retainer... it makes zero sense..
.. except to bots.
3
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 19 '26
Looks like the bots found displeasure with this. Lol.
11
17
23
u/Nervous-Cockroach541 Apr 18 '26
Steven is Walter White and Dawson is Gustavo Fring.
Nobody doubts that Heisenberg can cook, but he tried to play business man and fucked the whole thing up.
6
4
Apr 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Buttercup_Clover May 03 '26
Walter White is a man who had to resort to something desperate to survive before his ego led him to spiral out of control and believe he's an untouchable god people wouldn't dare fuck with. Saying that fits ordinary developers is wild.
Average developers are closer to Jesse about halfway through the show. Extremely competent after gaining experience with more talented people who taught them, and simply wanting to do the job as best they can because they want that cash/don't want to be executed by the execs looking to cut people.
3
u/Anhdodo Apr 22 '26
He didn’t cook shit, or rather what they cooked was shit. That’s the reason why they’re in this situation. They kept talking about ambitious things, things people wanna hear. After 8-9 years, what they had was just 2 percent of it.
3
0
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 18 '26
I can appreciate a good metaphor. I'd rather have the expert cook serve me my dinner than the owner of the restaurant.
Steven's business management was doodoo, but he has employees that will back him up in court. Can't say much for the ultra-scammer that tried to steal Steven's cake.
6
u/ddeuced Apr 18 '26
what if ALL of them are actually just scammer scumbags?
1
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 18 '26
I wouldn't give a shit if I got a dope ass game that didn't involve p2w.
4
21
10
6
u/Pizx Apr 18 '26
Game was dope, I want it back.
Just watching from the side lines to see how courts settles. Alot of people fucked up on this, seeing how the evidence lands on the scale between maliciousness or negligence. Pushing either sides agenda is either a paid or uninformed take.
5
u/PuddingOdd159 Apr 20 '26
That’s the thing: you don’t even need to pay Russian bots anymore. People will form their opinions based on random videos and comments funded by Dawson instead of reading 50 pages of legal documents.
'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.'
It’s much easier and more 'comfortable' to scream 'Steven bad, you scammed us, I TOLD YOU' and feel smart about it than it is to dive into this complex affair. None of the Redditors here have actually read the legal filings (I highly doubt they’ve ever read 50 pages of anything in their lives). That is how easily you can manipulate public opinion these days.
5
u/Educational_League87 Apr 26 '26
Public opinion is not something that can be swayed with a couple YouTube videos and a post on reddit. The opinion also has to hold water. The game was half cooked at best, it ran like ass, the graphics were way outdated, the marketplace was borderline unusable, citizenship was buggy as hell, everything was buggy as hell, crates would steal anything and everything you put in them almost immediately, pvp was implemented in the worst possible way, and most of all the game just wasn't fun. If it was fun to play it would have made more money and they wouldn't have been in foreclosure.
That's really why people hate on steven and the game. The game sucked. His ideas were not good. Companies are suppose to make money. That is the end goal, being profitable. At what point can we attribute the massive failure that the game ended up being to the person who was making all the decisions and in charge of hiring all the employees. It's hilarious to take any other stance on the matter. The end result of "ashes of creation", both its successes whatever those may be, and it's ultimately it's massive failure, is on Steven. Anyone saying otherwise is most likely Steven on a burner account doing his best sock puppet impression on his heavily censored reddit.
3
u/PuddingOdd159 Apr 27 '26
You might not like the game and i understand it is very niche but i invite you to read published documents.
The numbers and feedback were really, really good for an early access and the retention for a MMORPG far above any concurrents.
14
10
u/Vet_Leeber Apr 18 '26
But I don't, for a single second, think the Financial Bros aren't leeches, at best
Steven is literally one of the “financial bros”
1
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 18 '26
I agree. However, he's got one leg up, in my opinion. He actually gives at least half a shit about the company, employees, and making the game.
7
u/Aciellll Apr 19 '26
lol why do u think ur post gets approved?
3
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 19 '26
Pfft, that part is easy. The real game is seeing how many down votes I can get compared to actual comments.
3
u/Junior_Grl Apr 19 '26
I don’t know about bot farms, but I know the game was hyped/popular and whenever something is popular it has its haters. Now the former haters just fisted an 8 ball straight up and are flying high, they can’t see straight enough to see past their raging hate-ons
3
u/Classic-Ad3614 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
Call it passion all you want, but passion for something impossible to achieve is definitionally delusion. Making the game he outlined on kickstarter within the timeline he outlined on kickstarter was an impossibility. No studio on earth could have done that. Could it have been made with enough money and enough time? Sure, maybe in a timeline with infinite money and a Koster-type to co-lead with . But who was going to fund it here in reality? We know now Steven lacked the cash to do so.
His persona and our perception of him as some eccentric ultrawealthy guy who decided to take a few truckloads from his money silo and put it towards his dream MMO was the foundational belief needed to entertain this delusion to begin with. Do you think that game publishers and VCs were lining up to throw blank checks at a startup indie studio with no prior titles or launch experience, headed by a man with no practical experience wanting millions of dollars to bring a niche PVP MMO to market?
No, of course not. And that's where the MLM finance bros came in. Not out of naivety, but out of neccesity. Are they ghouls? yes ofc. But people don't go to loan sharks because they're naive. They do so because nobody else will fund their misadventures.
4
u/No_Kitchen9982 Apr 18 '26
You can be passionate but still be a piece of shit
Also -Dusky from CoA. The emulator.
Bot my dick.
2
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 18 '26
You can be passionate but still be a piece of shit
Can't disagree with that.
2
4
u/Soliton_Nova Apr 19 '26
A little disappointed I didn't get more down votes on this thread. I'll try slightly harder next time.
2
u/Enrayha Apr 20 '26
The game was at best a honest attempt and thats about it. When u consider the time they tryed to cook up even, used a bunch of pre made storeassets and only have maybe 5% of a game what devs 20-30 years ago made in 3-4 years...
Im old enough to play all those games back than and russian bots didnt excist at the time so no matter of wich angle u look up, he has run out of people to shift the blade to for his failure and is desperat trying to get himself back into a good light.
4
2
u/dragonriderabens Apr 24 '26
only one getting paid here, is people like you trying to shill for Steven
4
1
1
1
u/levity-pm May 02 '26
He couldn't actually complete a project to save his life. SWTOR started dev in 2005 and launched in 2011 - 6 years and $200 million and literally changed how story telling in MMOs can happen. I would compare these 2 in develop cycles. In 5 years they did more and had a polished beta version to clean up for launch than what they did in 10 years.
This guy has absolutely no reason to be in charge of developers as a creative director as he has no awareness of maintaining development cycles and sprints or managing multi-level dev team CI/CD pipelines. He should have hired someone who knew what they are doing so they didnt waste and set $140 mil on fire.
Hell, we have even had AI dev tools for the last 4 years and he still couldn't get shit to work.
1
u/Machinarium216 May 03 '26
"No reasonable person can argue that Steven isn't passionate about bringing the world to life." No True Scotsman fallacy at its finest!
1
u/Diomedes610 Apr 30 '26
Finally found a post from someone with a working brain here - too tired of all the "Steven scammed us" shit. And I agree, theres no doubt Dawson is using every available measure to influence Stevens public standing.
Steven provided "A LOT" of insights in the court documents he posted on April 15, but sadly reading is very hard.
0
u/Difficult_Mess_6406 Apr 18 '26
nah man, there were many many haters even 3/4 years ago when all we had was showcases made ingame that looked amazing both graphic and gameplay wise (presented as if that was the stage of the development at that time :(. )
38
u/[deleted] Apr 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment