Former Amazon Games devs say New World was pushed to launch before it was ready

A new report looks at how Amazon Games handled New World before and after launch, and the picture isn’t flattering. The big claim is that developers at Amazon’s San Diego studio felt the MMO was forced out the door before it was ready, despite internal concerns about its state.

According to the report, staff had already spent years reworking the project, including a major shift away from its earlier survival-focused direction into a more traditional MMO. That left the team trying to pull together a finished live service game under heavy pressure, with developers saying management decisions made the situation worse instead of better.

New World launched in 2021 on PC after several delays, and it opened huge, at least briefly. But the game also ran into long queues, bugs, economy issues, and a fast drop in player numbers once the initial rush faded. Those problems are part of why the question of whether it shipped too early has followed the game ever since.

The report focuses less on any one patch or update and more on how the project was managed behind the scenes. Former employees describe a workplace where leadership pushed big calls that the people making the game didn’t always agree with, including the decision to release when the team believed more time was needed.

That doesn’t change the fact that Amazon has kept supporting New World with updates and expansions since then. But if the report is accurate, it adds more context to why the MMO stumbled so hard at launch, and why some of its problems felt bigger than ordinary release-week issues.

The original piece appears to be part of a broader look at Amazon Games San Diego and New World’s development troubles. If more specific claims or responses from Amazon emerge, that’ll likely fill in the bigger picture.