Report: Details On Problems With Ultra Pro Wrestling

In February 2023, Ultra Pro Wrestling was announced with the promise of delivering a game that acted as the successor to WWF No Mercy.

Over three years later, there is no game.

The game was being published by Sam Vallely and Hyperfocus Games.

Mike Straw of Insider-Gaming published an extensive report looking at all the issues with the game and why it hasn’t been made.

Straw reports that Sam Vallely extracted animations from other wrestling games and that former team members were not involved in the process. In August 2026, Vallely published the following quote on the UPW Patreon:

“Just a quick one to show some of the process with updating the animations. Also, just to clarify before anyone asks – what’s being shown here is a development side tool. This isn’t something which players will have in-game. And before anyone asks, the AI images I mention will of course not touch the actual game. Sometimes AI images are used as placeholders or to help with things like this, but all AI-generated images used in the dev phase will be completely removed from UPW upon the game’s actual release.”

Vallely was the only developer on the project.

When an investor asked for a build in 2024, he didn’t receive one until September. When he did receive the build, it didn’t run.

Straw reports that team members went unpaid despite pouring $10,000 into the project.

The report dives into backers who pledged enough money to receive a custom championship belt, which would’ve cost around $34,000, have never received those titles, but they have received a request for more money.

Vallely tried to acquire the AKI trademark, and claimed to own it, when it was a registered mark held by a Delaware company for social-networking and food-delivery software.

Vallely became frustrated with the art director, who refused to work on AI-generated models. The art director continued to work unpaid for over a year.

Hyperfocus games fell apart after many staff members were unpaid and Vallely removed the COO without notice.

The wrestlers who signed on to be part of the game were initially promised 50%, but that was cut to 35%.

Vallely denied many allegations:

“For the avoidance of doubt, I deny that UPW has been built by importing finished animations from AKI games or Fight Forever. I deny that AI is being used to generate the finished game. I also deny that HFG had a body of salaried employees who were required to work without pay or finance the project without agreed compensation.”

He also said the allegations “appear to originate from an acrimonious internal dispute”, and that he holds “substantial contemporaneous evidence contradicting the account being presented, including contracts, messages, financial records and recorded meetings”.

The game still has an active Patreon page with 220 subscribers paying nearly $1,000 every month with promises of a demo finally coming later this year.

Fightful encourages fans to read the entire report by clicking here.