Ultra Pro Wrestling Remains Unreleased After Years of Delays and Disputes

Ultra Pro Wrestling remains unreleased more than three years after its Kickstarter campaign, with no playable demo and a Patreon that was still accepting subscriptions on September 2, 2026. An investigation by Insider Gaming describes years of delayed promises, internal disputes, unpaid work, questionable production practices, and a suspended trademark application tied to developer Hyperfocus Games.

The project was pitched as a spiritual successor to WWF No Mercy and other games built on the AKI engine. Its February 2023 Kickstarter reached a £17,000 target in three days and ended with £61,801 raised, roughly $83,000 at the time. The campaign and later agreements brought around 156 wrestlers and estates into the project, including The Hardys, Demolition, and the families of Eddie Guerrero and Chris Candido.

Backers at the highest tier were also promised a full-size replica of the Global Internet Wrestling Championship. The game, however, never reached the public in a playable form.

A Crowdfunded Game With No Playable Build

Hyperfocus Games repeatedly pushed its public timeline. In December 2024, the official account told a prospective buyer that the game was coming in 2025. A month later, founder Sam Vallely told backers that new gameplay footage was highly likely to arrive by the second quarter of that year. By 2026, the project was promising early access during the final quarter.

Those updates came alongside a shrinking team. In a January 8, 2025 message to the public Discord, Vallely said he was the only person handling programming and game engine development. He named six colleagues and told supporters to ask them whether he had kept Kickstarter or Patreon money for himself. Eighteen months later, five of those six people had left.

Internal messages reviewed by Insider Gaming also describe a development process built around animation data taken from classic wrestling games. On November 11, 2024, Vallely wrote that he had processed more than 900 animations and used hex codes to calculate a total of 5,787. He described plans to smooth the material through batch processing, with hands and facial expressions handled manually.

By December 5, Vallely said he had processed 3,285 animations. In June 2026, he wrote that he could extract moves from WCW/nWo Revenge and Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 and convert the resulting .anim files, a format already used by modders. In another public message, he estimated that 70% to 80% of the animations across the AKI games had been recreated.

Internal discussions also mention using models from AEW: Fight Forever as placeholders, along with models from EA’s Def Jam and UFC Undisputed series. Vallely denied that Ultra Pro Wrestling had been built by importing finished animations from AKI games or Fight Forever. He did not address whether animation data had been extracted from those games by memory address, which is the process described in his own messages.

A Patreon video published on August 30, 2026, showed animation work in progress through a development tool. Vallely said AI-generated images were being used only as temporary placeholders and would be removed before release. He described a batch process for correcting the animations, but did not explain where the underlying animation material came from.

One Programmer Carried the Engine Work

Vallely’s role as the sole programmer created another point of concern. In October 2023, he tried to move the project into a GitHub repository, ran into file-size and filename limits, and then accidentally deleted the entire game project while attempting to remove the repository.

He had not created a backup for several weeks. The project was recovered from a copy made for an unrelated virtual reality experiment that happened to be stored in another folder.

An investor began sending money monthly in early 2024 and asked for a contract and a build. Messages show him asking for both throughout June and July. A build eventually arrived in September, but the investor said it did not run. He blamed the lack of a second programmer and described the situation as “madness,” later writing, “Games aren’t made like this. Games die like this.”

By July 2025, the same investor was frustrated that the project had spent three years on animations. He also said he had little formal protection beyond a letter of intent and suspected the company’s legal paperwork did not cover his shares.

Unpaid Work and an Undelivered Championship Belt

Hyperfocus Games had monthly costs in March 2024, but most contributors were not receiving regular pay. An outsourced 3D studio in Ukraine invoiced $5,750, while the art director received $1,000 per month, an animator received $1,250, and Vallely paid himself $500. The total monthly requirement was about $8,500, with much of the money coming from the investor through a middleman.

Vallely said he paid himself roughly £420 per month while working seven days a week and claimed he had also put some of that money back into the project. Former contributors told Insider Gaming that one employee went four years without payment while spending around $10,000 on software and wrestler agreements. Another paid members of his own sub-team, including buying a graphics card, while waiting to be reimbursed.

Vallely denied that Hyperfocus Games had salaried employees required to work without pay or finance the project without agreed compensation. The investigation found no clear explanation for when contributors who spent personal money would be repaid.

The replica belt promised to top Kickstarter backers created another major financial problem. Quotes obtained in October 2023 put the price of a standard custom belt at $675, a deluxe version at $785, and the top version at $875. Producing roughly 50 belts would have cost about $34,000 at the cheapest price or close to $44,000 at the quality Vallely considered appropriate.

That cost would have consumed a large part of the campaign funds. The additional investment needed to produce the belts never arrived, and backers have not received a public update about them since. Instead, some supporters were asked to pay for Patreon access to development updates.

When backer Kev Iddon objected to the paid updates, Vallely replied that supporters were only entitled to what their Kickstarter tier promised and said refunds were available on request. The exchange added to concerns among backers who had expected Kickstarter supporters to receive early access to development information.

The AKI Trademark Application Faced USPTO Review

Ultra Pro Wrestling’s identity depends heavily on AKI, the Japanese studio behind WWF No Mercy and WCW/nWo Revenge. Hyperfocus Games applied to register the AKI name as a United States trademark in 2024 and later said the AKI intellectual property and trademark had been acquired.

The public record did not support that description. Hyperfocus Games Ltd was incorporated in Scotland in 2023 and had never released a game. The 25 years of recognition Vallely referenced belonged to AKI Corporation of Japan, a separate company with no involvement in Ultra Pro Wrestling, and there was no existing registration for Hyperfocus Games to renew.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office refused the first application on June 3, 2025. The conflict involved AKI AKI, a registered mark owned by a Delaware company for social-networking and food-delivery software. The examining attorney also found that Hyperfocus Games had submitted an unsigned and unverified application, paid for one class of goods instead of three, and later faced another refusal in November 2025.

A request for reconsideration was denied on January 5, 2026. On March 16, the USPTO suspended the application pending an administrative review of suspected improper submissions connected to the filing. The notice said the review could involve rules covering signatures, certifications, and representation before the agency. If violations are found, the office could issue an order requiring the applicant to explain why sanctions should not be imposed.

Internal documents later instructed contributors to avoid explicit references to AKI and “ripping” when discussing the project’s animations externally.

An AI Dispute Added Pressure Inside the Team

By spring 2026, Vallely had been working alone on the engine for three years. A dispute followed after the art director objected to using AI-generated 3D models. Vallely argued that the models could help move the project forward before a publisher became involved, while the art director and other contributors questioned the amount of work needed to make them usable.

During the dispute, Vallely suggested that contributors who objected to AI should not be included in a meeting where the decision was discussed. The planned pitch to AEW never went anywhere, according to sources, and decision-makers at AEW were not aware of it.

Vallely denied that AI was being used to generate the finished game. His Patreon explanation also said AI images used during development would be removed before release. Since Ultra Pro Wrestling has not reached release, the final use of that material cannot yet be assessed.

Funding Disagreement Led to a Team Exodus

By June 2026, contributors who had worked without pay or covered project expenses were pushing for a funding round that could place the team on salaries. Vallely preferred a smaller figure, and the disagreement continued for weeks alongside arguments about contracts, responsibilities, production plans, and what could honestly be presented to an investor.

The project’s chief operating officer prepared budget scenarios that included a £175,000 reserve for possible back pay and expense reimbursement. Vallely later accused the COO of awarding himself founder-level compensation and setting money aside for friends. Version history reviewed by Insider Gaming shows that a later draft removed the provisional figures from the operating budget, placed them on a separate scenario tab, and warned that they were not approved requests.

On July 27, Vallely removed the COO without a meeting or an opportunity to respond to the allegations. He revoked the COO title and told him not to discuss internal Hyperfocus Games details with other team members or publicly. The applicable non-disclosure agreement had its own problems. One recipient refused to sign a version containing a non-compete clause lasting until 2030, saying Vallely had taken a generic agreement from the internet.

Most contributors have now left, leaving Vallely and a small number of others on the project. Wrestler agreements also became a source of concern. In January 2026, a concept artist discovered that revenue shares had been reduced from 50% to 35% at least a year earlier without the talent being informed.

The concept artist’s own agreement assigned about 95 original characters to Hyperfocus Games and granted the company the relevant moral rights waiver. In return, he was promised 3.85% of profit from those characters after platform fees and other costs. With no game shipped, that profit share has produced nothing.

Old Comments Became Part of the Breakup

Former contributors also learned about Vallely’s earlier documentary work in July 2026. His film We Need To Talk About Islam, released after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, became the subject of renewed criticism after old Reddit discussions and footage circulated among the team.

In the film, Vallely said that in a particular context he could describe all Muslims as bad. His old online comments also included arguments about Islam, media coverage, and religious culture. Former contributors told Insider Gaming that the documentary and Vallely’s response to their concerns contributed to their decisions to leave.

Additional archived posts from his personal account included comments denying that being transgender was a real identity and saying cosmetic changes could not make a man a woman. Messages that appeared to mock an employee’s name were also raised with him.

Insider Gaming asked Vallely about the documentary, the archived posts, the animation process, the belt rewards, the trademark dispute, the team’s compensation, and the budget records. He did not answer the questions about the documentary or transphobic posts.

Vallely Denied Key Claims and Stopped Responding

Vallely said the material came from an acrimonious internal dispute and claimed that contributors had access to company information under written confidentiality agreements. He asked to review the documents and footage used for the investigation, but that request was declined because doing so could identify confidential sources.

His written denials covered three central claims. He said Ultra Pro Wrestling was not built by importing finished animations from AKI games or Fight Forever, denied that AI was being used to generate the finished game, and denied that Hyperfocus Games had salaried employees required to work without pay or fund the project without agreed compensation.

He said the company was treating the material as a possible unauthorized disclosure of confidential information and personal data, then declined further substantive correspondence. He did not provide the records he said contradicted the allegations or directly address the belt costs, the 70% to 80% animation figure, the AKI ownership claims, the USPTO suspension, or the one-to-one animation comparisons.

As of September 2, 2026, the project still had no released game or playable demo. Its Patreon had 220 subscribers paying nearly $1,000 per month, with a demo promised later in 2026.

Ultra Pro Wrestling’s next step remains unclear after years of changing timelines and the departure of most of its contributors. Share your thoughts in the comments, and follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.