Amazon Games acquires publishing rights for NCSoft's Throne & Liberty

NCSoft announced Amazon Games will be publishing its upcoming MMO, Throne & Liberty, in both the west and in Japan across PC and consoles. The partnership will cover North and South America, along with Europe.

The South Korean developer behind Guild Wars 2 and other popular MMOs such as Blade & Soul often publishes the games from its subsidiaries. Throne & Liberty will be its first title to be released in collaboration with an external publisher across multiple regions. 

"The last year has taught us a great deal about publishing and managing a successful live-service game on a global scale," said Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann, "and we’re ready to bring Throne and Liberty players an incredible experience at launch.” 

Presently, Amazon Games' experience in the live service market largely concerns the 2021 MMO New World from its Orange County subsidiary. It also holds the western publishing rights for Smilegate's 2019 MMO Lost Ark. 

Amazon Games finds its place in the games space

For Amazon Games, Throne & Liberty marks the third high-profile title it's agreed to publish in recent months. In late 2022, it announced that it would be publishing the next Tomb Raider entry from Crystal Dynamics, and will also publish Bandai Namco's MMORPG Blue Protocol. 

Additionally, the company will also publish another online title from developer Disruptive Games. Like Throne & Liberty, the unannounced title from Disruptive is intended to be multiplatform.

Becoming a publisher for third-party titles appears to be Amazon's primary goal going forward. During the 2010s, the game division attempted to get several games from its internal developers off the ground, such as the short-lived hero shooter Crucible. But many of those titles were canceled without much to show for them.

At one point, Amazon Games was working on an MMO for The Lord of the Rings, but that fell apart partially due to its developer being acquired by Tencent in 2020. The rights for the property has since been acquired by Embracer, which has recently stated multiple Lord of the Rings games are in active development.