It didn't take long for Amazon to decide when New World would be taken offline. As you might remember, the gaming division of the giant corporation announced that no more content would be made for the game just three months ago, while also quietly canceling the in-development The Lord of the Rings MMO project.
Yesterday, Amazon revealed that New World had been delisted from stores, making it unavailable for new purchases, and clarified the date the servers will go offline forever: January 31, 2027.
While that's over a year away, having a definitive shutdown date is a particularly sad occurrence for any MMO. Unlike regular games, MMOs are actual virtual worlds inhabited by thousands of players on each server, creating permanent communities and social structures such as guilds. For some players, losing access is a bit like losing connection to places and people you've come to appreciate. That's why communities often fight to keep them alive one way or another.
That sentiment is indeed very strong for New World, which was doing better with the latest updates released by the developers and was actually trending upward in player counts - just not as much as Amazon desired. The game's community has discussed ways to keep the game alive; there's precedent for it, chiefly with City of Heroes, the superhero-themed MMORPG created by Cryptic Studios and later acquired by NCSoft. When NCSoft shut down the game in 2012, fans spun up a private server, and the server code leak in April 2019 led to multiple private servers. One in particular, called Homecoming, eventually emerged above all others, and NCSoft granted Homecoming an official license to host the game in 2024.
That was about the best outcome New World fans could hope for. However, in a veritable twist, Alistair McFarlane, COO and Company Director at Facepunch (the British developer behind Rust and Garry's Mod), tweeted a $25 million 'offer' to purchase the game from Amazon, adding that 'games should never die'.
Needless to say, having an actual professional game studio pick up the game would be far better. Amazon also demonstrated they are not actually averse to the idea; as part of their mass gaming layoffs, they sold the upcoming MOBA, March of Giants, to Ubisoft. The difference is that in that case, they sold the game alongside the development team based in Montréal, Canada, whereas most of the New World team is likely already gone.
This would make it hard for a game like New World to sustain itself over time. Unlike sandbox games like Rust or Garry's Mod, the MMO is mostly themepark-based, meaning it sustains itself on developer-made content rather than user-generated content. Even if it acquired the license, Facepunch would still have to build a small team to keep it going and add new content every once in a while.
We've reached out to Facepunch to ask whether McFarlane's offer was genuine in the first place and will update this story if and when they respond.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
