MMO era over: Amazon gives up Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty

Amazon is finally withdrawing from the market for large online role-playing games. The well-known titles Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty are losing their publisher. You can find out what this means for millions of players and their scores here.

Withdrawal from the MMO market

Amazon Game Studios will end its publishing contracts for the online role-playing games Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty in Europe and North America in the fourth quarter of 2026 and early 2027. The company is largely withdrawing from the large MMORPG segment in order to focus on other projects. This affects millions of players who are now faced with changing operators. The group had already announced a comprehensive change in strategy last year.

The in-house project New World will be completely shut down on January 31, 2027 and is no longer available in regular stores. In contrast, Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty will remain available to players on PC and current consoles, as the original developers will take over the operation themselves in the future. According to Amazon, the company will hand over Throne and Liberty at the end of 2026 to FirstSpark Games and NCSoft. Users keep their characters and accounts provided they expressly agree to a data transfer. However, one downside to the transition period is that major content updates may need to be held back until the transition is complete to avoid server issues.

Surrender of Lost Ark

The change at Lost Ark will follow at the beginning of 2027. The South Korean studio Smilegate takes direct responsibility for the western market. Here too, game progress, ships and names are completely retained. However, players will have to accept a loss in certain social functions, as friend lists, guild data and chat histories will not be migrated for purely technical reasons.

Anyone who objects to the data being passed on to the new operators will lose all of their progress and will have to start all over again when they return later. Previous layoffs at Amazon Game Studios had caused great uncertainty in the community about the long-term support of the games. The move now creates much-needed clarity for the future of the two titles.

Focus on cloud gaming

In the future, Amazon will focus on titles for its in-house cloud service Luna as well as various party games. The company also plans to publish new games based on well-known brands such as Tomb Raider or James Bond. The final withdrawal from the labor-intensive live operation of role-playing games marks the end of the once great ambitions in the highly competitive market segment.