Amazon is ending live operations for Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty in the West, handing the MMOs back to Smilegate and NC with account migrations, service continuity promises, and some data loss ahead.
Image: wccftech.com
Amazon’s MMO publishing retreat now has dates attached
Amazon Game Studios is stepping away from live operations for its two remaining Western MMO publishing commitments, with Throne and Liberty moving to NC and FirstSpark Games in Q4 2026 and Lost Ark moving to Smilegate in early 2027. The announcements, posted to both games’ official sites and reported by VGC, Rock Paper Shotgun, Wccftech, MassivelyOP, and others, do not describe shutdowns. They describe publisher transitions, which is a very different kind of risk for players.
The immediate tension is simple: characters and progression are expected to survive, but the services around those characters are changing hands. Amazon’s Western role covered live operations, publishing support, customer service, regional communication, store operations, and the update pipeline. Once the migrations complete, Throne and Liberty will be operated by NC and its subsidiary FirstSpark Games, while Smilegate will take over Lost Ark in the West.
Both Amazon posts use similar language, saying the handover is intended to let the developers continue supporting their own worlds directly. VGC quotes Amazon’s statements as calling this a “positive outcome” for each community because the games are being handed back to their developers. That is the confirmed publisher framing. The broader business read is harder to ignore: Amazon MMO publishing is shrinking to zero as a live operational strategy, following earlier cuts to its internal MMO ambitions.
Lost Ark keeps the core account, but loses some social history
For Lost Ark players, the headline practical detail is continuity. According to Amazon’s Lost Ark FAQ as summarized by Rock Paper Shotgun and Wccftech, the transition to Smilegate in early 2027 is expected to preserve Steam accounts, characters, progression, inventory, game data, entitlements, purchases, items, and wallet balances. Wccftech reports that the migration will happen automatically unless players opt out, and that after the transition players will link their Steam accounts to Smilegate’s systems and accept Smilegate’s new Terms of Service.
The losses are smaller than a character wipe but still meaningful for guild officers, traders, static groups, and long-running communities. Rock Paper Shotgun reports that chat message history, in-game mail, friends list memos, and group names will not carry over. That means players should treat in-game mail and social notes as temporary records between now and the migration window, especially if they contain raid coordination, market arrangements, or returning-player breadcrumbs.
Subscriptions are the area where players should be most cautious with spending. Rock Paper Shotgun cites Amazon’s notice that active subscriptions will be canceled before the transition with appropriate notice, and that Amazon has already stopped selling the 12-month subscription. Amazon also advises players against buying new long-term subscriptions while the handling of remaining prepaid time is being finalized with Smilegate. For a live economy game like Lost Ark, that is not a balance change, but it changes the meta around account planning: short-term flexibility is safer than locking money into a service period that crosses a publisher handoff.
Smilegate’s direct control could change Lost Ark’s update cadence
The most interesting upside for Lost Ark is not the account migration itself. It is the possibility of a tighter content schedule between Korea and the global release. Rock Paper Shotgun points to a separate Smilegate post in which the developer acknowledges that Western players have often watched Korean raids, classes, story updates, gear-transfer changes, and honing improvements from a distance before receiving them later.
That lag has always had strategic consequences. When a raid arrives after weeks or months of Korean clears, global players often inherit solved mechanics, public build priorities, and market expectations before they ever zone in. When progression improvements are announced elsewhere first, current gearing decisions can feel devalued before the patch even lands. Smilegate’s stated aim, according to Rock Paper Shotgun’s reporting on the post, is to move toward simultaneous Korean and global updates.
Smilegate is also warning against expecting an instant merge of release schedules. The developer said it does not want to close the accumulated gap “in one stroke” because that could strain player progression and the rhythm of content consumption. That is the right caveat. A sudden compression of raids, classes, materials, and economy changes could punish anyone outside the top end. If Smilegate succeeds, the long-term gain is a cleaner global strategy game, where raid discovery, market timing, and build experimentation happen closer to day one. The short-term version is likely to be messier and paced deliberately.
Throne and Liberty moves first, with cross-play intact
Throne and Liberty is scheduled to change hands before Lost Ark. Amazon’s announcement, cited by VGC and Wccftech, says Western live operations will transition to NC and FirstSpark Games in Q4 2026. Gaming.net reports that NC’s own notice and Amazon’s FAQ confirmed the handover on August 12, 2026, unwinding the publishing arrangement Amazon and NCSoft announced in February 2023 for North America, South America, Europe, and Japan across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
For players, the transfer appears designed to preserve the playable foundation. Wccftech reports that characters, progression, inventory, entitlements, game data, regions, realms, and platform access will carry over unless players opt out. The game will remain available on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox, and cross-play will continue across those platforms. Gaming.net adds that no reinstallation is required, regions and realms are staying in place, and players will accept NC’s Terms of Service on first login after the transition.
NC is also adding PURPLE, its own PC platform, as another way to access the game. According to Wccftech and Gaming.net, cross-progression will work between Steam and PURPLE, but not across other platform pairings. That distinction matters for console players. Cross-play keeps the shared battlefield and social ecosystem together, but cross-progression is narrower than full account portability. If you play on PlayStation or Xbox, the sources do not support assuming you can freely move progress to another platform through this migration.
The Throne and Liberty migration has guild and update risks
The Throne and Liberty FAQ, as detailed by Gaming.net, gets unusually specific about what happens around the edges of the data transfer. Lucent, Loyalty Points, Sollant, and Ornate Coins are expected to carry over with their quantity and value, though NC notes that terms of use and expiration policies may change during migration. Account enforcement history, including bans and suspensions, transfers too. Support tickets filed with Amazon do not.
Guilds need to pay attention to opt-outs. Gaming.net reports that if a member opts out of the data transfer, that character is removed from the roster. If a guild leader opts out, leadership passes by automatic succession. If every member opts out, the guild is disbanded. Characters and guilds with duplicate names after service integration may also be affected, according to the same FAQ summary. That creates a coordination problem rather than a combat problem: guild leaders should make sure inactive officers, alternate leaders, and core members understand the migration before the window closes.
There may also be a content-timing cost. Wccftech reports that regular content updates and bug fixes are expected to continue, but some major updates may be delayed until after the transition, including the larger Nix release cited in Amazon’s messaging. That is the classic live-service handoff tradeoff. Keeping the servers stable and the database clean takes priority over maintaining the most aggressive patch calendar. For PvP guilds and progression groups, the practical move is to plan around a possible lull or reshuffling of major update timing in late 2026.
Amazon’s exit follows a wider collapse of its MMO plan
The handovers are not isolated paperwork. They land after Amazon’s MMO strategy had already been reduced on multiple fronts. Rock Paper Shotgun frames the move alongside Amazon backing out of the MMO space, citing the end of new development additions for New World after mass layoffs and the cancellation of its in-development Lord of the Rings MMO. VGC similarly says the announcements appear to be the last notable move in Amazon’s decision to step away from the genre, after layoffs across Amazon and cuts affecting Amazon Games Orange County.
That context changes how to read the Lost Ark publishing change and Throne and Liberty NCSoft takeover. Lost Ark was Amazon’s biggest Western MMO publishing success by visibility. MeinMMO notes that Lost Ark drew more than 1.3 million concurrent Steam players at its February 2022 global launch, citing SteamDB’s all-time Steam charts. Throne and Liberty gave Amazon another large-scale external MMO to operate after launching in the West in 2024. If Amazon were still committed to being a long-term MMO publisher, these are the kinds of partnerships it would be expected to protect.
Instead, Amazon is reducing exposure to the hardest part of the MMO business: persistent operations. Publishing a live MMO means managing updates, regional expectations, customer support, monetization, moderation, localization, platform compliance, and an always-angry calendar. The confirmed facts are the transitions themselves, the dates, and the account-migration terms. The interpretation is that Amazon is choosing to shed long-running operational complexity while leaving the games alive under studios with direct ownership of the underlying products.
How players should prepare before the handoff
Neither announced transition is a shutdown, and that should be the first filter for player decision-making. Lost Ark is slated to continue under Smilegate in early 2027. Throne and Liberty is slated to continue under NC and FirstSpark Games in Q4 2026. In both cases, the official guidance reported so far points to automatic migration unless a player opts out, with core character progression preserved.
The safest preparation is mundane but important. Lost Ark players should clear or archive anything important from in-game mail, chat history, friends memos, and group records before the migration. They should also be careful with subscriptions, since Amazon has stopped selling 12-month plans and has warned against new long-term subscription purchases while prepaid-time handling is still being finalized with Smilegate. Throne and Liberty players should watch for NC’s Terms of Service, PURPLE account details if they play on PC, guild leadership implications, currency policy changes, and any announced delay to major updates.
The strategic read is cautiously positive for continuity and cautious for timing. Developer-run operations can reduce the friction between design decisions and Western implementation, especially for Lost Ark’s long-standing cadence gap. At the same time, publisher transitions are database, account, legal, storefront, and support projects before they are content projects. Players should expect service to continue, but they should not treat every piece of account-adjacent data as permanent until Smilegate and NC finish the migrations and publish final instructions.