Like Thrones and Liberty, Amazon Game Studios will cease live service operations for the successful online role-playing game. In early 2027, Korean developer Smilegate RPG will take over global support and publishing of the game itself.
After nearly five years, Amazon Game Studios is repositioning, or rather ceasing its activities in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game space. As the company announced, the partnership with development studio Smilegate RPG supporting Lost Ark in the West will be ending, just like Thrones and Liberty, which were recently moved to NC.
Starting in early 2027, Smilegate will take over the operation of the game entirely on its own. The move marks the end of a formative phase for the game, which achieved historic success on Steam when it launched in the West in February 2022, with over 1.3 million concurrent active users.
Both Amazon and Smilegate emphasize that the transition for active players should be as smooth as possible. Characters, game progress, purchased items and remaining game currency will be transferred losslessly to Smilegate’s new system infrastructure. Technically, only smaller locally stored data (such as internal guild notes or chat history) cannot be migrated. To complete the account transfer, players will simply need to agree to Smilegate’s new Terms of Service at the appropriate time.
In a statement, Smilegate described the move as a positive outcome for Lost Ark’s future. Directly taking over operations will allow the development team to implement future global updates, balance adjustments and feedback from the community without having to go through an external publisher.
The exit from Lost Ark is part of a fundamental shift in strategy for Amazon Games. Amazon’s games arm will increasingly focus on cloud services and selected single-player games and licensed projects after the group halted further development of its own MMORPG New World late last year.
