Amazon Games announced this week that New World will receive no new content updates going forward. The MMO is entering maintenance mode, with the development team halting work on expansions, seasons, and major features.
The company published an official update stating servers will remain online “for the foreseeable future.” Amazon is committed to giving players at least six months’ advance notice before any final shutdown. Current owners will still be able to play, but the future of the game is now on a timer.
Shortly after the announcement went live, players reported that New World had been removed unintentionally, but it’s now been restored. The game appears to no longer be available for purchase, despite the original post suggesting it would remain on sale in the near term. This has left some recent buyers frustrated, particularly those who purchased the game or expansions in recent weeks.
The decision comes on the heels of broader layoffs at Amazon Games. Reports indicate the New World development team based in Irvine was hit particularly hard, with claims that the studio has been effectively gutted. Amazon hasn’t provided detailed numbers on the layoffs affecting the New World team specifically.
Ironically, New World had just experienced a small resurgence in players. The most recent expansion became free for existing owners, pushing concurrent players on Steam to around 50,000 in recent weeks. At the time of the announcement, roughly 33,000 players were online simultaneously on Steam alone.
For MMO players, a maintenance mode announcement is typically a death sentence. Once a live service game declares no new content is coming, the player base usually evaporates quickly. Players invest time in these games with the expectation of ongoing updates and fresh activities. Without that promise, there’s little reason to continue grinding.
New World launched on September 28, 2021, with massive hype and enormous day-one numbers on Steam. The game became one of the biggest launches in Steam history. But cracks showed immediately—long server queues, game-breaking duplication exploits, and a shallow endgame sent players fleeing within weeks.
Amazon Games Orange County spent the next two years trying to fix the game. They overhauled progression systems, added mounts through the paid “Rise of the Angry Earth” expansion in October 2023, and eventually brought the game to consoles as “New World: Aeternum.” None of it was enough to sustain a healthy player base long-term.
The company has form here. Amazon previously launched Crucible in 2020, only to shut it down the same year after disastrous reception. New World at least made it three years, but the pattern is familiar—big investment, rocky launch, rapid decline.
Amazon Games still publishes Lost Ark in the West, though that game is developed by Smilegate in Korea. The company’s overall games strategy has seen multiple shifts, with layoffs hitting various studios and support teams over the past year.
What happens now
The lack of new content means New World joins a growing list of live service games that couldn’t sustain themselves. Without fresh updates, even dedicated fans will drift away. The six-month warning system gives players time to prepare, but for most, the writing is on the wall.
Amazon hasn’t announced plans to transfer operations to a third-party operator, which sometimes happens with struggling MMOs. Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic found new life under different management. For now, New World appears destined to run on life support until player numbers drop low enough that keeping servers online becomes unjustifiable.
Console players who recently jumped in with the Aeternum release are likely the most affected. The game arrived on PlayStation and Xbox less than a year ago, and those players had every reason to expect ongoing support.
