Overview
- Amazon announced Wednesday that it will transfer Western live operations of Throne and Liberty to NC/FirstSpark in Q4 2026 and return Lost Ark to Smilegate in early 2027.
- Accounts, characters, progression, inventory, purchases and wallet balances will be migrated automatically unless players opt out, but they must accept new publisher terms and link accounts after the handovers.
- Some player-created and social data will not transfer — examples include in‑game mail, chat history, friends‑list notes, blacklist memos, guild nicknames and stronghold gift messages — so players should claim important items and messages before the moves.
- Active Amazon subscriptions will be cancelled before each transition and long‑term subscriptions have been removed from sale, and publishers warn the migrations could cause short downtime or delay large content releases.
- The transfers mark a wider pullback by Amazon from MMOs following prior layoffs and New World’s winding down, and official community channels, websites and customer support for the Western services will shift to Smilegate and NC.