New World: Aeternum stood out as an impressive milestone for Amazon Game Studios. A hit MMO at launch, it will now be remembered as an unfortunate sacrifice on the altar of the tech giant’s coming AI transformation. The company has announced that New World will get no more new content. It’s not shutting down this instant, but it seems unlikely to last beyond 2026. Fans are understandably upset, and they’re current plastering the game’s Steam review section with colorful critiques of Amazon.
A victim of the company’s newly announced retreat from AAA game development as it culls a staggering 14,000 employees from its payrolls, New World was deemed “no longer sustainable to continue supporting…with new content updates.” The reaction on the game’s Steam page has been swift, with over 1,000 new negative reviews since Amazon informed fans it was pulling the plug.
“Recently started playing was enjoying it, now its being shut down because Amazon being Amazon,” wrote one Steam reviewer. “Recently bought some marks of fortune to buy some in game cosmetics for a game I thought was gonna be a long lasting live-service MMORPG, especially after the general positive reception of Nighthaven and they are shutting down the servers lmao,” wrote another.
There’s never a good moment to reveal you’re abandoning your flagship MMO, but the news comes just a couple of weeks after the game’s season 10 Nighthaven update went live. That and the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion needed to access it are being made free to all players, but no one who’s recently spent money on the game buying content will be getting any refunds.
After drifting below 10,000 concurrent players on Steam during the last year, New World saw a decent resurgence this month, peaking at over 50,000 concurrents after the new content went live. Some fans are blaming corporate greed rather than any unique live-service failings on the part of New World and the MMO’s developers.
“Was fun but then amazon killed it,” a player wrote in the review section. “Bought it the same day the announced it was shutting down, screw you amazon,” wrote another. A third didn’t hold back either. “An amazing game that finally got footing and headwind only to be shutdown because Amazon wants more AI,” they wrote. “No seriously that’s the reason from Amazon for the the mass layoffs that shuttered the studio. Don’t buy it it’ll be shutdown in 8 months.”
