Smilegate, the developer of South Korean MMO Lost Ark will be taking control of the Western servers that were previously run by Amazon Game Studios. Likewise, FireSpark will be taking control of Throne and Liberty‘s servers. Though, the transition will cause some disruption and data loss for players.
While Amazon have poured money into in-house game development, they have also acted as a global publisher on several MMOs, such as Lost Ark, and found considerably more success than with their own projects. That said, as Amazon slowly backs out of the MMO room, shutting down development on New World and canning their in-development Lord of the Rings MMO, the future for these arms-length games has been uncertain.
In a blog post on Lost Ark’s site, Amazon write that “Starting in early 2027 Amazon Game Studios will end its live service operations of Lost Ark, with Smilegate taking over going forward.”
While there’s no set date for Lost Ark’s transition, it’s due to take place in early 2027. According to the post, while much of your account data will survive the transition, there will be aspects of your Lost Ark history that won’t carry over when control of the servers changes hands. All of your chat message history and in-game mail will be gone, as will your friends list memos and group names. However, characters, progression, inventory, game data and entitlements, and your wallet balance will all come across.
One aspect of the move that you should pay close attention to is that subscriptions don’t carry over. Amazon say that “Active subscriptions will be cancelled before the transition with appropriate notice”, and they have already stopped selling the 12-month subscription. Still, they also recommend “not purchasing new long-term subscriptions” as “remaining pre-paid time handling is being finalised with Smilegate.”
The move from Amazon to Smilegate may actually see some boons for players, with updates due to become simultaneous in the Korean and global releases of Lost Ark. “There have been long stretches where each new raid, each new class, and each new story revealed in Korea was something you could only watch from a distance,” Smilegate said in a separate post about the transition. “Because the Western release cadence differed, raid strategies were often public by the time content arrived, which took much of the joy out of solving a raid for yourselves. And when updates like gear transfer or honing improvements were announced, the progress you were making at that moment could suddenly feel meaningless.”
That simultaneous release won’t be an immediate shift. “If we tried to force the accumulated distance shut in one stroke, we believe it could put real strain on your progression and on the rhythm at which you enjoy new content,” Smilegate say. “So rather than rushing to erase the gap, we want to narrow it step by step, carefully, while paying close attention to how you actually play.”
It’s not only Lost Ark that is being handed back to its developers, Amazon are returning Throne and Liberty to FirstSpark Games. That transition is due to take place at the end of the year. Reading through the Q&A, it looks to be a less disruptive move, with less data loss for players.
After so many job losses and game closures as part of Amazon’s shifting gaming plans, it’s good to see some games which have developed large playerbases are actually allowed to continue. Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty mark two of the few successes Amazon has had in gaming. Perhaps it is purely down to the fact they’ve been at a distance from the megacorporation.
Thanks to groups like Stop Killing Games, there is a growing movement to preserve and maintain always-online games. It’s good to see a game not simply be turned off because a parent company has changed its priorities. Especially, as Edwin learned, considering how difficult it is to transfer control of an MMO to its players.
