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Amazon repeats its Lost Ark playbook to bring another international MMO to the West

Tomas Franzese
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Amazon Games announced today that it will publish NCSoft’s fantasy MMORPG Throne and Liberty in North America, South America, Europe, and Japan. This cements a unique niche that Amazon Games has found for itself as a publisher: bringing Asian MMOs to the west.

[NCing] THRONE AND LIBERTY - Official Trailer | Work in Progress | 엔씨소프트

Throne and Liberty is an ambitious MMO in development that includes fast-paced action combat, features large-scale PvE and PvP battles, and lets players transform into different creatures and control the environment during battles. The game has been in development for several years, but we didn’t know if it’d get a Western release until now. With Amazon’s backing, Throne and Liberty will now come out for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X in the West with full cross-play support.

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A cloaked character stares out at a village in Throne and Liberty.

While MMO fans will be happy at this announcement, this also demonstrates that Amazon Games has found a niche for itself as a game publisher by bringing Eastern MMOs to the West. For years, Amazon struggled to gain solid footing as a game developer and publisher, with multiple games canceled and titles like Crucible failing to gain traction. While MMOs aren’t as popular as they used to be, Amazon has found a successful niche in trying to make the genre thrive again. It released New World to somewhat positive success, but really found a hit with the release of Lost Ark in February 2022.

Now, it’s backing Bandai Namco’s Blue Protocol and NCSoft’s Throne and Liberty in hopes of repeating this success. Amazon Games Vice Preisident Christoph Hartmann explained what makes these kinds of games appealing in a press release.

“Publishing games that live and grow over time remains a critical piece of our strategy, and delivering games of the highest quality from the world’s most talented developers is one of the cornerstones of our business,” Hartmann writes. “The last year has taught us a great deal about publishing and managing a successful live-service game on a global scale, and we’re ready to bring Throne and Liberty players an incredible experience at launch.”

It remains to be seen if either of those games will reach Lost Ark’s level of success and if Amazon Games plans to do this with even more Eastern MMOs. Outside of the MMO space, Amazon Games will also be publishing the next Tomb Raider game. 

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