Yesterday we learned that Amazon's mass layoffs have essentially killed the MMORPG New World, despite its recent Season 10 update bringing in a wave of fresh interest from players.
Personally speaking, I was an early adopter of New World. It released in the middle of the pandemic (September 2021 to be exact), and I remember looking forward to getting to experience a new big MMORPG at a time when in-person social interaction was still mostly restrictive. I bought it on release, even though I only had a laptop with a weak graphics card at the time.
Although I had to run the game at a stutter-filled 30-40fps on low settings, I enjoyed my time with it. Did it have its flaws? Certainly. I believe I've even described them earlier on this very site. Chief among the flaws were the lack of an endgame, the generic quests, and nonsensical lore.
But it did have a number of strengths, including its skill system, fun crafting, and action combat. My favorite aspect of the game was the feedback it provided when you did any action. My weapon of choice was a musket and my favorite skill was woodcutting. I've yet to find an MMORPG that has made firing a gun or chopping down a tree feel more satisfying.
Like many though, I stopped playing New World after a few months. The game was hampered by several poor choices at Amazon, and the developers were essentially hamstrung in terms of the amount of content they could deliver. They attempted a last minute Hail Mary with an expansion and a console release, but neither were able to deliver the amount of economic growth that executives and shareholders were looking for, apparently.
As already hinted at, an official update from the developers yesterday confirmed that all new content development for New World would cease, with the only assurance being an "intention to keep servers operating through 2026."
The surprising if not ironic factor here is that New World was experiencing a resurrection of sorts in recent weeks. According to Steam Charts data, the game’s average player count had more than doubled since September, growing from around 9,000 to nearly 51,000. When Amazon's layoffs were announced, there were 33,000 concurrent players online.
These numbers aren't comparable to World of Warcraft or Runescape, but it represents a healthy population for the MMORPG genre. The New World community was understandably in disbelief, with players on Reddit lamenting how the game was "at its most popular point in years" and had "finally got back to being popular in the MMO community." Many felt that the Season 10 update "felt like a real turning point for the game."
When I heard that this was happening I couldn't help but react with a bit of incredulity, since I was planning on creating a new character given the positive news I had been hearing about Season 10. I had even given Amazon a bit of praise for making its expansion Rise of the Angry Earth free to original adopters of the base game (such as myself). But it seems like that decision was less a magnanimous one, and more a way to entice people to return and buy cosmetics in the moments before servers were put on maintenance mode.
One might ask of course, why kill a game that was growing, had tens of thousands of active players, and was finally receiving positive buzz? For many in the New World community, the answer comes down to (rightfully) blaming corporate capitalism. Although New World was pretty successful by MMORPG standards and seemed like it was on the right track, it wasn't delivering as big of a return on investment as shareholders were hoping for.
Further, like Google and Netflix, Amazon isn't truly invested in gaming as a core business. It's a side gig for them, and if they don't experience a massive success, they'd rather cut it and try something else without any care for the community they've grown or the developer lives they've affected. For a genre like MMORPGs, where consistent and longterm support is a requirement, this kind of philosophy just doesn't work. Corporate capitalism does not lead to a healthy gaming industry.
So where do we move from here? I think that as consumers, we need to be very careful about what we support. We can't support the kind of actions taken by Amazon yesterday. It not only hurts the gaming industry, but society as a whole, when creativity, passion, and genuine care for one's craft is replaced by a simple desire to make more money in the short term with no care for the product or the human cost of what you are doing.
The other issue this raises is game preservation. What happens when New World's servers inevitably shutdown? Will you ever be able to return to that world again outside of a private server that may or may not be supported? Will they release an offline singleplayer version? Whatever the outcome is, it doesn't look like it will be a positive one.
As corporations get more control over the gaming industry, I worry that corporate executives will increasingly target niche genres in the interest of money over everything. I'm not even sure that longterm industry stalwarts like World of Warcraft are safe given what we've seen recently from Microsoft. Where we go from here is unknown, but it certainly feels like a watershed moment for the gaming industry.
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Be kind and think critically.