The era of major video games at Amazon Games is coming to an end. Following the setback with New World and the likely halted developments on the “Lord of the Rings” MMORPG, the head of the company is also leaving.
Who is leaving the company? According to a post by industry insider Jason Schreier, Christoph Hartmann, the head of Amazon Game Studios, is leaving the company. The German manager originates from Rosenheim and has been the face of MMORPGs for Amazon in recent years.
Since his takeover, major in-house productions such as New World and popular releases of Asian games like Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty have emerged, all attracting hundreds of thousands of players. However, his era at Amazon Games seems to be ending.
Learn more about this sad story here:
Amazon Games is changing
Why is the head leaving the company? The exact reasons are currently unclear; the information about the departure of the German manager comes from Bloomberg journalist and industry insider Jason Schreier on Bluesky. Accordingly, there is still no personal statement from Hartmann.
It is clear, however, that a shift is currently taking place at Amazon Games. While the focus has primarily been on the big, successful MMORPGs and productions since Hartmann’s takeover, this era is now coming to an end. The former 2K head stood for AAA quality and had many plans, as he explained to our colleagues at GameStar. However, his projects are now in jeopardy.
The inventory:
- The development of New World is stopped, the shutdown date is set.
- Lost Ark is quietly struggling and has fewer players than ever.
- Throne and Liberty is increasingly becoming a playground for hardcore guilds.
- Also, the Lord of the Rings MMORPG, which so many were waiting for, will likely never be released.
- Instead, Amazon wants to focus on pushing its cloud gaming service Luna along with its own game portfolio in the future.
This development, moving away from blockbuster titles toward a service provider in cloud gaming, could be the reason for the German manager’s departure. The focus at Amazon Games has changed significantly.
What is cloud gaming?
Cloud gaming is a service where the game does not run on the user’s device but in the cloud. The inputs from the user’s device are transmitted to the service, executed in the cloud, and the game’s image is transmitted back. This allows hardware-intensive titles to be played from any device without downloading.
Cloud gaming instead of MMORPGs
Is Amazon repeating Google’s mistake? With Google Stadia, there was already an attempt years ago by a tech giant to conquer the gaming market with a sophisticated cloud gaming offering. However, despite substantial financial resources, players were left with only their controller, the rest was discontinued.
Although the service was technically interesting, it lacked the right games, especially since one had to repurchase titles that were already owned, for example, on Steam. Amazon is attempting this with a partnership with GOG, which has recently parted ways with CD Project (via gameswirtschaft.de).
Anyone with an Amazon Prime subscription can play many titles from GOG.com easily and at no additional cost through the cloud gaming service. However, despite the connection between the two services, a strong library like that of Steam or the largest competitor Xbox, which offers cloud gaming as part of its “Xbox Gamepass,” is still lacking. GOG mainly offers older titles, and most PC gamers have their library on Steam.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s cloud service “Luna” is not new, it launched back in 2020 as a competing product to Google Stadia. Whether Amazon does better than Google with Stadia remains to be seen.
With the departure of head Christoph Hartmann, the era of Amazon as a major hope for western MMORPG productions also comes to an end. However, the story of Amazon and gaming dates back to 2008: Amazon not only wanted to be a big player in games but also to drive Steam out of the market… and has been doing so for 17 years
