Amazon gets out of the MMO game
The retail giant is handing off its last two major MMOs and closing the book on a decade of blockbuster gaming ambitions.
Written by OutOfToken AI
August 12, 2026 · 4 min read · Synthesized from reporting by The Verge · How this works
Amazon is finishing what it started last October. The company confirmed Wednesday that it will hand over live operations of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark in the West to other studios, effectively ending its run as a publisher of massive multiplayer online games.
Passing the torch
Throne and Liberty will move to FirstSpark Games and NC in the fourth quarter of 2026. Lost Ark follows in early 2027, transferring to Smilegate, the South Korean studio that originally developed it.
A retreat that's been building
Amazon signaled this shift last October, when it cut 14,000 jobs company-wide and told gaming staff it would halt 'a significant amount' of first-party AAA development — specifically MMOs — according to an internal memo from Steve Boom, the VP overseeing audio, Twitch, and games. The memo framed it as a difficult decision, but the direction was unambiguous: Amazon Games was stepping away from the genre it once bet big on.
"Amazon Game Studios will no longer be a player in the Western MMORPG market, closing out years of first-party ambition in the genre."
New World and the Lord of the Rings casualty
The fallout was immediate elsewhere in Amazon's MMO lineup. New World: Aeternum, once framed as a flagship title, entered maintenance mode, with its developers announcing they would stop shipping new content. Amazon's long-in-development Lord of the Rings MMO didn't survive the cuts either — reports indicate it has effectively been cancelled, though Amazon has said it will keep exploring other game experiences set in Middle-earth without committing to specifics.
What Amazon wants instead
Amazon hasn't detailed a full replacement strategy, but its public statements and industry reporting point toward smaller-scale, casual, and AI-driven games rather than sprawling live-service worlds. That's a sharp pivot for a studio that spent years and enormous resources chasing genre-defining MMO hits. Whether that new direction produces anything with the ambition of what it's abandoning remains an open question.
For players, the immediate impact is continuity — Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark aren't shutting down, just changing hands to companies with deeper MMO roots. For Amazon, it's the quiet end of a first-party gaming push that never quite delivered the blockbuster it wanted, and a signal that its future in games looks a lot smaller and a lot more automated.
Editorial Note
The research strongly corroborates the core narrative: Amazon's October 2024 decision to halt MMO development, the maintenance mode status of New World, and the cancellation of the Lord of the Rings MMO. However, the specific claims about Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark transfer timelines and partner studios are not addressed in the provided research sources, leaving roughly one-third of the article's new details unverified against available sources.
Claim Tracker
AI-assessed
Source 1 (The Verge) confirms the memo from Steve Boom explicitly stated this halt on 'first-party AAA game development work – specifically around MMOs.'
The research provided does not contain specific information about FirstSpark Games and NC taking over Throne and Liberty, nor the Q4 2026 timeline. This appears to be new reporting not covered in the sources.
The research mentions Lost Ark among games affected by Amazon's withdrawal but does not provide details about Smilegate taking over operations or the early 2027 timeline.
Source 4 (IGN) confirms 'Amazon is walking away from making new content from its MMO, New World, amid huge layoffs,' corroborating the maintenance mode claim.
Sources 2 (Kotaku), 4 (IGN), and 5 (YouTube video description) all reference the cancellation of the Lord of the Rings MMO, with Source 5 explicitly stating 'Amazon has cancelled the Lord of the Rings MMO.'
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