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We knew it was happening, and now we have a date: Amazon's New World is being shut down on January 31, 2027. As people lament the fantasy MMO's demise, Alistair McFarlane, the chief operations officer and company director of Facepunch Studios, the company behind Rust and Garry's Mod, appears to be trying to organize some form of preservation for the dying game.
He made his apparent bid on Twitter. "$25 million, final offer," he states, tagging Amazon Game Studios. He adds in a separate tweet: "Games should never die." He's right about that, regardless of how serious this bid is – Twitter isn't exactly a formal negotiating table, and his initial response followed Facepunch employee "Errn" jokingly saying that "I tried to get Ali to buy NW for me but he told me to fuck off."
People would be behind him if there was some legitimate conversation, though. "Facepunch purchasing New World and making use of the Azoth engine could be one of the best timelines for the future of this side of gaming," comments Sequisha, a survival games streamer.
25m, final offer @amazongamesJanuary 15, 2026
"Yo this would be massive!! Please let this happen," says another response. "Holy shit this would be amazing," says a third. They represent a consensus that this would be a remarkable turnaround at a point of certain death for the beleaguered online RPG.
Launching in September 2021, New World tasks players with traversing the mysterious and frequently threatening land of Aeternum, through which you gather resources and build up your base of operations for further expansion. In October 2025, just over four years later, Amazon announced New World would be finishing up.
There's pretty significant overlap with Facepunch's Rust, very much a market leader when it comes to survival, crafting and base-building games. That makes Facepunch an ideal candidate to take over New World. Obviously any kind of handover like this would be incredibly complicated, but McFarlane seems emphatic and ready to get stuck in if the opportunity's available.
He's got some allies, too. "If you need tips about buying cancelled games, lmk," says Simon Collins-Laflamme, director of Hytale, a canceled but now resurrected and thriving Minecraft-like adventure. Perhaps New World could live again, we'll just have to wait and see if Amazon's willing to let it happen.
