Amazon Game Studios will return Western territory publishing responsibilities for “Throne and Liberty” and “Lost Ark” to game developers NC and Smilegate, respectively, amid the company’s pivot away from massively multiplayer online games (MMOs).
“As part of our continued strategic evolution, we have made the decision to transition live operations of ‘Lost Ark’ and ‘Throne and Liberty’ back to their respective development studios. We have tremendous respect for the teams at Smilegate and NC, the worlds they’ve built and the passionate communities that have grown around these games,” Amazon Game Studios said in a statement Wednesday. “We’re proud of what we accomplished together and are committed to ensuring a smooth transition for players.”
Amazon’s games division faced a significant number of layoffs last October amid overall company cuts and strategy shifts across the business, seeing the elimination of 14,000 corporate employees. The choice to divest “Throne and Liberty” and “Lost Ark” comes after Amazon has already indicated its plans to pivot from investing more into the MMO space. The internal focus now is on already planned AAA titles, like the upcoming “Tomb Raider” games, and expanding Amazon’s cloud gaming service Luna through the studio’s “game night”-style party games and its licensed-title business.
According to Amazon, players of both games will not be directly affected, as data will directly transfer to the video game developers. However, Amazon Game Studios announced in-game mail, friends list memos, blacklist memos, guild member nicknames, stronghold gift messages and chat history will not transfer over for “Lost Ark.”
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Accounts will be transferred over automatically, with “Throne and Liberty” beginning later this year and “Lost Ark” beginning early 2027. Active subscriptions will be canceled prior to the transition, but existing balances will carry over.
Both Smilegate and NC, which operates under its subsidiary FirstSpark Games, originally created their respective games and will continue their development.
There may be downtime during the transition, which Amazon Game Studios will communicate as developments continue. Additional information can be found on the “Throne and Liberty” and “Lost Ark” community pages.