Amazon's big MMO era has taken its last gasp, as the company is ending its publishing deals for both Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark. The games themselves will continue, however: NC will take over Throne and Liberty for Western markets near the end of 2026, while Smilegate will do the same for Lost Ark in early 2027.
Little should change for players as a result of the handoffs, although a small number of details on the Throne and Liberty changeover are still being hammered out and will be announced closer to the actual transition. On the Lost Ark side, some user data will not make the transfer, including in-game mail, friends list memos and group names, guild member nicknames and memos, and chat messages and history.
The games themselves will continue to operate as they always have and will receive regular content updates leading up to the changeover, although Throne and Liberty developer Firespark Games warned that major updates may be held back until the transition is complete.
Swinging the axe on Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty is pretty much the final nail in the coffin containing Amazon's once-lofty gaming ambitions. The company put a pin in its home-grown MMO New World in 2025 as part of a shift away from big-budget gaming (which of course also saw major layoffs), but it continued to serve as publisher of those externally developed MMOs in the West.
Lost Ark fans started to get nervous about that arrangement earlier this year, though, as a new round of layoffs in March impacted Amazon's Lost Ark team. In light of that, this outcome is probably good news.
This is normally where I'd embed the Courtroom Chaos Starring Snoop Dogg trailer to remind everyone what Amazon Games is now focusing its efforts on. But while poking around for more information on these MMO handovers, I came across something new, and possibly worse, and I now inflict it upon you:
