Does Amazon Games Develop Video Games?
Yes, Amazon Games develops and publishes video games. They have started as Amazon Game Studios in 2012, developing mobile games and social games for Facebook. Most notable examples are the mobile game Lost Within and Facebook game Living Classics.
They have recently released the MMORPG game New World and are planning to release another title Lost Ark in spring 2022.
Amazon Games is a video game company that was founded in 2012 with its headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Its former name used to be Amazon Game Studios.
Amazon Games currently has 4 studios – San Diego, Seattle, Orange County and the most recent, Montreal, Canada. This latter studio is led by former Ubisoft Montreal members.
What Are The Games Made By Amazon Games?
In 2016 the studio announced at Twitchcon that they are working on 3 PC games – Breakaway, Crucible and New World.
Breakaway
Breakaway is a combination of football and brawler games. It combines MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) elements with sports elements. It was created for easy streaming on Twitch.
Your team’s aim is to get the ball (called ‘relic’) into the opposite team’s goal. You can fight, shoot and even build turrets to stop the other team from scoring or taking the ball.
During its run, Breakaway was considered as a potential candidate for the next esports game. Unfortunately, further development of Breakaway was stopped in March 2018. But that’s possibly not the end of this game as Amazon Games said it might be developed further in the future.
Some argue that trying to make it an esports game right from release was pretty ambitious and that’s why its progress was halted. Most, if not all, esports games didn’t set out to be an esports game.
Here’s a video of the gameplay:
Crucible
Crucible was released in May 2020 for Windows and was free to play. It was developed by a subsidiary of Amazon Games, Relentless Studios.
Crucible was a multiplayer third-person shooter, similar to games like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch. Many people compared Crucible to the video game Paragon, which servers closed down in 2018.
Unfortunately, much like Breakaway, Crucible was cancelled in October 2020 to focus on New World. Amazon Games gave full refunds on any microtransactions within the game, which is a huge plus in my eyes.
Here’s bit of a gameplay:
New World
While New World was announced in 2016, it was released September 28th, 2021. New World is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) for PC/Steam.
It’s set in a fictional island Aeternum mid-17th century. You can choose between 3 factions (Marauders, The Syndicate, The Covenant) which shape the island’s future and determines who you fight in PvP. Each faction has players and NPCs alike. Within each faction you can have a group of up to 5 people called a company.
Besides controlling and protecting your town and territories, you can also go out on dungeon expeditions, invasions and even an all-out war between teams of 50 players each.
Here’s a gameplay of New World:
Visit the official New World website
Lost Ark
Lost Ark is a MMORPG, free to play PC/Steam game. It’s developed by Smilegate RPG and is set to be published in March 2022 by Amazon Games.
Lost Ark is set in a fictional world Akesia, where demons are reawakened to wreak havoc on the land. In this game you can explore entire continents, battle hordes of demons, level up your class, explore new cultures and see fantasy creatures. You can fight in PvP against fellow players, explore dungeons, fight epic raid bosses and more.
There will be 5 classes of playstyle that you can choose from + subclasses:
- Warriors – Berserker, Palladin, Gunlancer
- Martial Artists – Striker, Wardancer, Scrapper, Soulfist
- Assassins – Shadowhunter, Deathblade
- Gunners – Gunslinger, Artillerist, Deadeye, Sharpshooter
- Mages – Bard, Summoner
Each class has a different set of abilities, which you can use during battles and level them up.
Here’s a gameplay from the closed beta:
Visit the official Lost Ark website
Are Amazon Games Free?
Not all Amazon Games are free. The next free game will be Lost Ark, which will contain microtransactions. You will be also able to buy paid DLCs for this game.
If you have an Amazon Prime account, you also have an automatic Prime Gaming subscription. It will let you download games for free each month. Besides that, there are number of other perks, like subscribing to a Twitch channel of your choice with your Prime account every month.
Does Amazon Game Release Any Merch?
Yes, currently there are t-shirts, hoodies and popsockets for New World. You can check the New World merch here.
Can I Work For Amazon Games?
Yes! Amazon Games is looking for new employees for their game studios. They’re looking for game UI engineers, quest designers, gameplay engineers, character artists, animators, product managers, software developers and many, many more
You can check out all available jobs here.
Conclusion
Time will tell whether Amazon Games can become a strong contender among other game studios. It will be certainly interesting to see what other game titles they come up with.
Dana
I’m a 30-something year-old woman and more of a gamer than I’ve ever been before. Ever since I was a little kid, I’d play games on our PC. I'm here to help you find great, quality video game merchandise and talk about your favorite video games and everything related to them. :)
