I'm sure you all know by now that Amazon Game Studios has basically "pulled the plug" on New World: Aeternum and it can no longer be bought on steam. Link: https://www.newworld.com/en-us/news/articles/update-on-new-world

Quick rundown of the situation: New World released their season 10 recently where it brought a lot of returning and new players (me included) to the game with new hope that this game will actually turn out to be the MMO they promised. Lo and behold AGS had huge layoffs and Amazon pulled the plug on the game, meaning that no new content will be made. There are promises of them supporting the game until the end of 2026, but with so many people deciding to stop playing, and quite understandably so, I have the feeling that they'll just announce that there is no point in keeping servers alive, so basically they are silently sun setting the game. All your time and money invested in the game - poof, gone like a fart in the wind.

The whole situation made me think - there are actually NO other MMOs that are worth the player's time and money except the titans that we know about already and have played hundreds of hours. All new MMOS coming out and that have come out the last years either have aggressive cash shop and are P2W or just, as we have seen, stop getting supported after X amount of time.

So taking into account all of that we have the following options:

World of Warcraft

Final Fantasy XIV

Guild Wars 2

ESO

Old School Rune Scape

RuneScape

Those MMORPG games are the only ones that are worth your time and money and have low chance of the developers shutting down the game out of the blue. Those games are the only ones where you get a steady return of your time and money invested.

Other than that, I feel really sorry for the developers of New World and I can't imagine how gutted they feel, it seemed like they actually cared about the game and wanted to deliver the experience they promised. I really wanted this game to be the new "No Man's Sky redemption arc", but unfortunately this is the situation that we have...

In a sweeping layoff, Amazon is getting rid of 30k+ people today, and in the future they will remove more and more to replace them with AI.

New World is feeling these layoffs, some people are missing from the discord, and artists are posting on Twitter talking about being laid off. We don't know the full extent of the layoffs yet, as they're going out this morning.

I'm worried for the future of the game.

Edit Update: The Amazon Employees subreddit is saying the entire Irvine AGS studio is gone. That's the one that runs New World.

Edit Update 2: Amazon Games jobs listings do not have the Irvine site listed. Probably confirmation New World is cooked.

Edit Update 3: The AGS LinkedIn page no longer exists. I think we might be cooked cooked.

I just felt like making this post as someone who played New World back at launch and really enjoyed it. The core gameplay hooked me right away, combat felt great, PvP was exciting, and the trade skills were surprisingly rewarding. But like many others, I eventually dropped it. The content felt thin, and the game seemed unfinished overall.

Since then, I always kind of thought of the game as a “flopped” MMO. That changed recently when I started seeing YouTubers covering it again, and then I watched the devs Season 10 preview (which is basically a free expansion). It actually looked really good, so I decided to give it another shot about four days ago.

Now that I’m freshly max level, I can honestly say the game feels like it’s in a great place. The new zones are beautifully designed, the gameplay still feels as tight as ever, and the overall polish is miles ahead of launch. I haven’t reached the deep endgame loop yet, but from what I’ve seen, Season 10 is supposed to address a lot of those issues, including a new 10-player raid and the new Catacombs system (a procedurally generated dungeon that ramps up in difficulty the deeper you go).

If you’ve been itching for a new MMO or thinking about returning to New World, I’d highly recommend checking it out right now. It’s genuinely worth your time again.

EDIT: It's had a massive reassurance of players the last month(s). Back in june/july it barely reached 9-10k on pc (keep in mind there's console players unaccounted for). This weekend they reached approximately 25k on steam.

So for the past couple weeks I've been down this rabbit hole trying to figure out what's actually happening with AI in gaming, and just when I think I'm getting somewhere, some new article drops that completely changes things.
Found this one today and honestly it's kind of wild - Amazon is basically pulling back on a ton of their AAA stuff, especially MMOs. This is all happening while they're doing massive layoffs (like 14,000 people across the company), so you can kinda see why Amazon Games is hitting the brakes and reevaluating everything.

Here's what's NOT getting axed though:
That new Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics is still going
Maverick Games' driving game is still on track
Amazon Montreal's March of the Giants just finished closed alpha and seems fine
And apparently Luna just got "Courtroom Chaos: Starring Snoop Dogg" which... okay then. Seems like they're pivoting toward more casual/AI-driven stuff on that platform.

The MMO part hurts though. New World isn't getting any new content anymore (servers stay up till 2026 at least), and who knows what's happening with their other MMO projects. Feels like Amazon's just done betting big on those long-term multiplayer experiences.
Pretty crazy to see them scale back this hard after pumping so much money into gaming over the last few years. Anyone else following this? What do you think it means for the industry when even Amazon with their infinite money is pulling back?

What’s up with all the slander? just curious