Amazon Walks Away from MMO Publishing, Hands Lost Ark and Throne & Liberty Back to Their Developers
Amazon Game Studios is exiting the MMO business. The company has handed operational duties for Lost Ark and Throne & Liberty back to their original developers, ending its active presence in the massively multiplayer online game space. VGC
Amazon announced the handover through messages posted directly to players of both games. The transitions are staggered: Throne & Liberty's Western live operations — the day-to-day running of servers, updates and community management — move to developer FirstSpark Games and South Korean publisher NC in the fourth quarter of 2026. Lost Ark's operations transfer to its developer, Smilegate, in early 2027. VGC
Both games were published by Amazon Games in Western markets. Lost Ark, a PC action-MMO originally developed by Smilegate RPG, launched in the West in 2022. Throne & Liberty, developed by NCSoft, released on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2024. Amazon had signed the publishing agreement for Throne & Liberty with NCSoft in February 2023, covering Western and Japanese territories. Amazon Games
Amazon's own MMO, New World, will go offline permanently on 31 January 2027. That closure, combined with the two publishing handovers, removes Amazon entirely from the MMO category it entered with fanfare just a few years ago. VGC
The retreat traces back to October 2025, when Amazon disclosed it had halted a significant portion of its first-party AAA game development — specifically work centred on MMOs — within Amazon Game Studios. VGC
For Lost Ark players, the transition comes with a data question. Player accounts will be transferred to Smilegate as part of the handover, and players can opt out of that transfer until 10 November 2026. Once data has transferred, players can request deletion through Smilegate RPG's own data-deletion process. Lost Ark Support
For fans of the two games, the immediate practical question is whether the new operators keep things running smoothly. Both Smilegate and NCSoft/FirstSpark are the original creators of their respective titles, which means the games are returning to studios with deep familiarity with the underlying code and design. The handover dates give players a window to prepare, but the real test will come once Amazon steps away and the new operators take full control.
What stands out is how completely Amazon is pulling back. A company that once signalled serious ambition in online game publishing — signing external titles, building its own MMO, and investing in AAA development — is now left with no active MMO presence at all.
