Amazon is winding down New World. GamesRadar reports that the recently launched Season 10 will serve as the MMO’s final content release, and the studio is pausing rollout of additional features while promising the game will remain playable through 2026 with at least six months’ notice before anything changes access. This isn’t just another server shuffle; it’s the end of an era for a high‑profile, big‑budget fantasy MMO that tried to find a long-term audience. The decision arrives amid a wider round of layoffs across Amazon’s games operations that affected thousands of jobs, and the word “sustainability” is the one being used to explain the move.
Among the voices reacting is Greg Street, a longtime designer who led systems work on World of Warcraft for years and now runs Fantastic Pixel Castle. Street posted a short message on X thanking the New World team for “trying to keep the MMO dream alive,” while also noting the wider pressures facing modern MMO development as studios chase scope and scale.
I’m sorry for my friends at Amazon who were trying to keep the MMO dream alive
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 29, 2025
Street’s own studio has been trying to launch a new MMORPG, and earlier this month, he revealed that a publishing deal with NetEase had collapsed, leaving the team hunting for partners. That mirrors a pattern seen across the industry where finding sustainable budgets and timelines for online games is often the more challenging part, even when the creative work is solid. New World’s playerbase and public perception have fluctuated significantly over the past 4 years. Patches and content pushes helped at times, but live-service competition and the cost of keeping big online worlds running made carving out a long-term foothold difficult. Amazon is promising players a clear runway through 2026 and advance notice before any reduction in access goes live.
Whether New World becomes a case study in necessary pruning or a cautionary tale about big budgets and live-service economics, the closure of its content pipeline is a reminder that even sizable studios can struggle to keep MMOs running in the long term. That struggle is playing out not just at Amazon, but at smaller teams like Fantastic Pixel Castle, which now face a tougher publishing climate. There will be time to parse the details, and for players to decide whether to stay with the servers through 2026 or move on. For now, the takeaway is blunt: another modern MMO is stepping back from expansion, and the people who build these worlds are feeling the squeeze.
