Amazon Cancels Fantasy Sport Game Breakaway

Amazon announced four years ago that they would expand from the world of online book-selling (and everything-else selling) into the world of game development, an unsurprising yet unexpected move from one of the biggest media companies in the world today. A number of games have been announced - yet remain unreleased - by the new studio/publisher, but today that number has dropped by one: Breakaway, their 4v4 fantasy sports combat thing, has officially been canceled.

According to Reddit:

Since our last announcement, we have worked to implement community feedback and iterate on Breakaway’s core gameplay. While we have developed many ideas and made a lot of progress, we are also setting a very high bar for ourselves. In spite of our efforts, we didn’t achieve the breakthrough that made the game what we all hoped it could be. After a lot of soul searching, the team decided to focus on new ideas. As a result, Breakaway is no longer in active development.

We remain exceptionally proud of the team’s work, and feel privileged to have been a part of such a dedicated and enthusiastic community. We will reach out to this channel as soon as we have news to share regarding our new projects, and if a thunderbolt of inspiration strikes that leads us back to Breakaway, you’ll be the first to know.

With this game’s cancellation, Amazon has only two announced projects still in-production: New World, an open-world MMO sandbox thing, and Crucible, a deathmatch MOBA thing that has the potential of going full-on battle royale in future.

It seems like we’re still a long ways from seeing if Amazon is a capable game studio, as we don’t have a release date for the other two games either. I personally have high hopes for New World, but… maybe that’s foolish of me, considering what this cancellation implies.