Amazon Games Hands Lost Ark's Western Servers Back to Developer Smilegate in 2027

Amazon Games will stop running the Western servers for Lost Ark in early 2027, handing control back to the game's original developer, Smilegate. The South Korean studio already operates every other Lost Ark server worldwide, so once the transition is complete the game will sit entirely under one roof for the first time in the West. Amazon announced the change on August 12, 2026, in a post titled "An Update on Lost Ark in the West" on the game's official site (Eurogamer).

Lost Ark is a massively-multiplayer online action role-playing game — a persistent online world where thousands of players raid, trade and progress together. Smilegate RPG built it; Amazon Games has published and operated the Western version since its launch.

For players, the headline is that their accounts survive the move. Character progression, unlocks, save data and wallet balances will all carry over unchanged. What will not survive is softer data: in-game mail, friends lists, group names, blacklist memos, guild member nicknames and memos, stronghold gift messages, quiz data, and chat messages and history will all be wiped. Players will also need to accept a new Smilegate terms of service. Amazon will step away from Lost Ark's Western social media accounts and official website after the handover.

There are rougher edges. Active in-game subscriptions will be cancelled at the time of transition, and the 12-month Crystalline Plus subscription has already been pulled from the in-game store. Spanish-language support will be removed in the October 2026 update, leaving Western servers with English-only text. No exact handover date has been given — only "early 2027."

The transition caps a busy period for the game in the West. Servers across both Western regions are being consolidated in two phases starting August 26, 2026, according to a post published August 3. The August 2026 update, titled "The Bitter Cold," added the Kazeros Raid: Act 2 Extreme and a Panda World avatar collection. July's "Summer of Extremes" update brought the first act of that extreme raid, a new Paradise season, solo-mode expansion and summer cosmetics.

Smilegate is no stranger to global publishing. The company describes its Crossfire franchise — a first-person shooter series — as having reached 1.1 billion people worldwide, and it launched Lost Ark in Japan through a local publisher there. Taking the Western servers in-house means the studio that built Lost Ark will now run it everywhere it exists.

For fans, the shift is a double-edged one. The developer taking direct control could mean tighter alignment between updates and player feedback, with fewer layers between the studio and its Western audience. The trade-offs — wiped social data, cancelled subscriptions, lost Spanish support — are the cost of that consolidation. Either way, Lost Ark's Western players now have a date to circle, even if it is an inexact one.