Amazon Games was hit with "significant" layoffs today, part of the massive 14,000 job cuts announced by Amazon but also reflecting "strategic changes" at the company, including "the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work—specifically around MMOs." As it turns out, that includes the MMO New World: Aeternum, which will receive no further content updates and could be gone completely by the end of 2026.

"After four years of steady content updates and a major new console release, we've reached a point where it is no longer sustainable to continue supporting the game with new content updates," today's update states.

"The recently launched Season 10 and Nighthaven update will serve as the final content release for New World on PC and consoles. It is only after much consideration that we've reached this decision. To thank you, the New World community, for your support over the years, we have made the Nighthaven release available to you for free. To ensure all New World players can experience this content, we also made Rise of the Angry Earth free for all PC players."

This comes as a genuine surprise to me—a shock, really. New World wasn't a huge hit by any means but seemed a reasonably successful mid-tier MMO, which [[link]] quite frankly is about as good as Amazon Games has managed. Its concurrent player count ebbed and flowed, but the [[link]] peaks of 50,000 and 60,000 players suggests to me that the players are there—the failure is in keeping them engaged.

New World: Aeternum will remain available for purchase, and you'll still be able to buy in-game currency as usual, although I'm not sure why you'd want to. Because let's be honest here, the countdown clock is ticking: New World isn't being taken offline right away, and Amazon said it will "continue to keep the game running smoothly" with bug fixes and server merges as necessary. "World bosses, bonus weeks, and some seasonal events" will also continue, so New World will [[link]] keep ticking along without any major hitches, at least until it becomes obvious that nothing new has happened in the past six months or so.

But Amazon only committed to keeping the New World servers "live through 2026," and the likelihood of it surviving beyond that, especially given the self-fulfilling swirl of declining player counts, is very slim. So I can see continuing to bang around in the game with your online pals as the sun slowly goes down, absolutely—but why would anyone put money into an MMO with no future?

More details on how exactly the plug will be pulled will be shared "in the coming months," but Amazon promised "provide a minimum of six months’ notice before making any changes that impact your ability to play New World: Aeternum."