Amazon Game Studios is stepping back from the western versions of both Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty, ending its publishing agreements with Korean developers Smilegate and NC respectively. The handovers were announced simultaneously on 12 August 2026, with Amazon citing a continued strategic evolution away from live-service MMO publishing.
The games themselves will not be shutting down. Both Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty will continue to run, with Smilegate and NC taking over the full publishing, community, and infrastructure responsibilities from their respective dates.
Smilegate Takes Full Control of Lost Ark from Early 2027
Lost Ark’s western servers have been operated by Amazon since the game launched outside Asia in 2022. That arrangement ends in early 2027, when Smilegate — the Korean studio that created and develops the game — will assume full control of the western version.
According to Smilegate, the transition means player feedback will reach the development team more directly, and content updates should arrive faster without the buffer of a third-party publisher in between. The company has described the handover as a reunification of the game’s global operations rather than a rescue.
“All characters, progression, and items will continue and go forward with you when service transitions to Smilegate.” — Smilegate community announcement
An opt-out period is currently active for players who prefer not to have their data transferred. Players who take no action will be migrated automatically when the transition completes. One notable change: the western version of Lost Ark will be English-only from October 2026 onwards, with Spanish language support removed ahead of the Smilegate handover.
What Transfers and What Players Will Lose
For the vast majority of Lost Ark players, the transition should be seamless. Characters, progression, inventory, purchased items, cosmetics, premium currency balances and gem data will all carry over automatically.
However, there are specific categories of data that will not transfer:
What won’t carry over in Lost Ark: In-game mail (including reward notifications) · Friends list memos · Guild member nicknames and memos · Stronghold gift messages · Chat history. Players should clear their inboxes before the transition date — anything sitting in in-game mail at the cutoff will be permanently lost.
Active Crystalline Plus subscriptions will be cancelled before the transition, with existing balances carried over. Amazon has advised players against purchasing new long-term subscriptions in the meantime. Accounts link automatically to Smilegate’s systems via existing Steam accounts.
Throne and Liberty, New World, and Amazon’s MMO Exit
For Throne and Liberty, the process mirrors Lost Ark but moves faster. NC — through its subsidiary FirstSpark Games — will take over western publishing in Q4 2026. Character data, purchases and progress transfer automatically, with crossplay between Steam, PlayStation and Xbox fully preserved after the changeover.
The dual announcements mark the effective end of Amazon’s publishing ambitions in the MMO space. The company had already indicated in 2025 that it was stepping back from first-party AAA game development, with a focus shift that led to significant layoffs. New World: Aeternum — Amazon’s own internally developed MMO — is scheduled to end service in January 2027, completing the withdrawal.
For Lost Ark players specifically, how Korean action MMOs like Crimson Desert have managed their own western operations offers some optimism. Returning the game to its original developer is not necessarily bad news. Smilegate’s management of the Korean and Asian versions has consistently run ahead of western content releases under Amazon. A unified publishing structure should reduce the lag between regional updates that has frustrated parts of the western community for years — a problem familiar to anyone who has followed World of Warcraft or other live-service MMOs.
