Big changes are coming to the MMOs Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark because Amazon's actually stepping away from handling them. In a welcome change from the norm for these kinds of announcements, it's been revealed the original devs will have more control over both projects going forward.
The news was delivered through community updates. "Starting in Q4 2026, Amazon Game Studios will transition live operations of Throne and Liberty in the West to FirstSpark Games/NC," the post on Throne and Liberty reads. "Together with NC, we are working closely to support a smooth transition and minimize disruption to your experience."
FirstSpark games is the studio behind Throne and Liberty, while NC Corporation handles publishing in Asian regions. Given NC is the entity that handles Guild Wars and several other large-scale series and games, it has the resources to handle something like this without much change or disruption, and it's an added bonus that the devs get to be more involved in the publishing framework.
Lost Ark will go through a similar process. "Starting in early 2027, Amazon Game Studios will end its live service operations of Lost Ark, with Smilegate taking over going forward," reads that post. "We are excited about the future of Lost Ark and feel this is a positive outcome for the game's players, as we are handing the game back to the developers."
Naturally, there are a lot of questions surrounding this for existing players. According to information provided, this'll be relatively seamless in Throne and Liberty. Nothing about how or where you can play is changing - it'll still be available on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S - and the in-game accounts will be the same.
What will be different is where you go for customer support and similar resources, since they'll be sorted by NC, rather than Amazon. "Our goal is to minimize disruption to your gameplay," reads a response to the possibility of disruption.
Meanwhile, Lost Ark players will lose a large amount of their in-game communication history and player nicknames. Other than that, it should be pretty smooth.
I would expect at least a little bit of friction around servers, once the passovers happen and shortly thereafter. Technology like this always needs to be stress-tested, and if you're a fan, you should brace yourself for teething problems.
Beyond that though, it's refreshing to see something like this not be about the games shutting down. Amazon announced it's pulling the plug on New World in 2027, after supporting the survival MMO since 2021. It seems the corporation is divesting entirely from massive, multiplayer releases, and it's nice to have two examples of where that's not a death knell.
