Amazon Games is reportedly parting ways with its online role-playing games. In the announcement to return the publishing rights of Throne and Liberty back to NCSoft, the amount Amazon supposedly paid for the rights was also revealed.
How much did Amazon pay? According to a report from the Korean industry magazine invenglobal.com, Amazon reportedly paid around 70 million US dollars to NCSoft to handle Throne and Liberty as the global publisher. The online role-playing game was released in the West on October 1, 2024. However, the first launch occurred in the Korean home market in December 2023, under the control of developer FirstSpark Games.
Interestingly, the publishing contract between Amazon and NCSoft apparently was initially supposed to run until September 30, 2028, with an option extending into 2029. Due to the recently announced return of the global publishing rights of Throne and Liberty to NCSoft, a contract adjustment became necessary, through which the details of the original contract have now come to light.
The report also explains that NCSoft has already received the full amount from Amazon. The new contract apparently does not foresee a partial refund due to the early termination.
Below Expectations
What does this mean? Amazon apparently willingly foregoes significantly more than a year of global publishing rights for Throne and Liberty, even though they had paid a fortune for it a few years ago. Clearly, this is due to the new strategy, which focuses more on the Amazon service Luna and AI games. After all, they are also concluding New World and parting ways with Lost Ark.
However, this is likely a clear sign of how unsuccessful Throne and Liberty has been in the West. There have been several hints in the past:
- When NCSoft still listed the performance of games individually in its financial reports, they completely ignored Throne and Liberty. If the MMORPG had been the expected success at launch, they surely would have rubbed it in the investors’ faces.
- The launch of Throne and Liberty on Steam was good, with 336,300 concurrent players, but still far from the numbers that New World or Lost Ark had at their respective launches.
- Less than a year after the Western launch, 95 percent of its players were already lost.
There are several reasons for this. While the nowadays rather unusual “Massively” experience of Throne and Liberty is fascinating, the strong focus on guilds and open-world PvP has constantly caused frustration. The character progression related to equipment and skill upgrades is very grind-heavy. Meanwhile, the Free2Play payment model suffers from the real money currency linked to the auction house.
In parts, Lost Ark – also an MMORPG for which Amazon secured the global publishing rights – has faced similar issues. However, there were several factors that contributed to one of the strongest launches in Steam history: Why was Lost Ark so much more successful than Throne and Liberty? MMORPG expert analyzes the launch
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!