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is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Amazon is fully stepping back from MMOs. After saying last year that it would be halting “a significant amount” of its work on first-party AAA games, “specifically around MMOs,” Amazon will be handing over live operations of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark in the West to other companies, according to announcements on Wednesday. Throne and Liberty will be taken over by FirstSpark Games and NC in Q4 2026. Lost Ark will be run by Smilegate starting in early 2027.
When Amazon announced the broader strategy shift in October, the developers of a third MMO, New World: Aeternum, announced plans to stop offering new content updates. As of January, you can’t buy that game anymore, and it will be taken offline on January 31st, 2027.
Amazon’s current gaming strategy focuses more on its Luna cloud gaming service, party games you can play on a TV with your phone (including ones with AI-powered Snoop Dogg and Arnold Schwarzenegger characters), and games that tie into other franchises Amazon is working on, like James Bond and Tomb Raider. Amazon’s gaming boss spelled it all out for me in a recent interview.
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