Amazon’s gaming division has revealed that it’ll be wrapping up support for its breakout MMO New World after its 10th season. The announcement follows reports that the tech company will be laying off 14,000 employees in the upcoming round of redundancies.
New World, one of the largest MMO launches in recent years, will no longer receive new updates following massive layoffs affecting Amazon.
The tech company announced its intention to lay off a number of its employees yesterday after sending an email to staff confirming that it needed to make “organisational changes” that would affect 14,000 corporate jobs. These job cuts would also impact Amazon’s gaming division, leading to the cancellation of games in progress and other live-service titles.
In a memo obtained by Bloomberg and verified by Variety, Amazon Games would announce that it would pivot away from MMOs. and instead invest more into its Luna cloud gaming service.
According to the memo, authored by Steve Boom, Amazon’s Vice President of Audio, Twitch and Games, the sweeping cuts at Amazon represent “strategic changes [that] go beyond what is happening company-wide”. Boom would also reveal that Amazon Games leadership had been evaluating its plans over the past several months “through the lens of our mission to deliver the very best gaming experiences to customers while leaning into the things that Amazon does best.”
New World‘s official website would confirm via a blog post today that the game will cease all future support following the release of its tenth and final season, Nighthaven.
The post would celebrate the New World’s fourth anniversary while also thanking players for their support over the years. Amazon Games would also share its intention to slowly sunset the MMO and reveal that the upcoming expansion will be free for all players.
“The recently launched Season 10 and Nighthaven update will serve as the final content release for New World on PC and consoles. It is only after much consideration that we’ve reached this decision. To thank you, the New World community, for your support over the years, we have made the Nighthaven release available to you for free. To ensure all New World players can experience this content, we also made Rise of the Angry Earth free for all PC players.”
Truthfully, it’s a little surprising to see New World close up shop. While the game had struggled to reach the heights of players since launch (which would peak at 913,000 players), according to SteamDB, the game would consistently reach playercounts of 60k following the release of new content. Which, to me, demonstrates there is a dedicated fanbase for the IP; it just needed to find ways to retain players in between gaps of new content.
New World: Aeternum will still be available to purchase, and players can choose to still buy in-game currency in the near future. However, given that the game has all but announced it will eventually shut down, it makes purchasing such items a far less enticing offer, knowing you could lose those digital goods sooner than later.
Amazon Games has announced that it plans to keep servers running through 2026, and plans to “continue to keep the game running smoothly” with bug fixes and server merges as necessary. “World bosses, bonus weeks, and some seasonal events” will also continue, so players will at least get to continue having a game to play, but if you’re a late-game player, odds are it won’t be enough to get you to stick around.
The company have promised that they’ll reveal more details on how they intend to shut down New World in the future, and shared that they’ll give players at least six months at minimum before any final measures.
Regardless, 2025 continues to be a grim year for game devs as nearly every major studio announces massive layoffs and restructures amid an uncertain economy and pivot to AI (which is totally not a bubble destined to burst at any moment).
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