Already, 2025 is moving full steam ahead with the first quarter bringing major game updates for THRONE AND LIBERTY, New World: Aeternum, and Lost Ark, the latter also celebrating its 3rd anniversary. Additionally, Amazon Games’ leaders were on-hand at D.I.C.E. Summit 2025 as featured speakers and met with many at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC).
Read on for a snapshot of what Amazon Games has been up to over the past few months.
King of Meat will launch later this year
Via the March 27 Nintendo Direct, we confirmed that not only will King of Meat — Glowmade’s upcoming hacking, slashing, co-op combat game for one-through-four players — release on Nintendo Switch in addition to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, but it’s coming later this year! Stay tuned to Amazon Games for much more about King of Meat as we approach launch. In the meantime, check out this interview, which includes insight from the twisted minds that conceptualized the wild and whacky world of Loregok in which King of Meat is set.
Lost Ark Introduced a New Game Update, a New Class, and Marked Its Third Anniversary
2025 kicked off in Arkesia with the “Frosty Fate” Update. The Lost Ark January Update included a Karma Progression and Frontier System, Kazeros Raid Act 2, Festa of Arkesia, and much more.
On February 11, we celebrated Lost Ark’s third anniversary and its more than 30 updates to date. An exciting journey since first launching in 2022, Lost Ark soared to a record-breaking number of concurrent players on Steam, where it still remains in the platform’s top 10 games of all time in terms of peak concurrence. It remains one of the most-played free MMOs on Steam today.
Rounding out the quarter, in its February Update, Arkesia welcomed the new Wildsoul Advanced Class: a Specialist class addition. While all three Specialist classes use illusion techniques passed down through the Yoz tribe, Wildsoul differs from other Specialists like the Artist or Aeromancer classes as she seals the power of the animal spirit with her scroll. During battle, she releases the sealed animal spirit power and engages foes.
New World: Aeternum Launched Season 7 as well as the “Siege of Sulfur” Event
In late January, the New World: Aeternum team introduced the first season of 2025! Season 7, titled “Season of Conquerors.” The new Season brought with it new content, game updates, and fixes that make adventures in Aeternum even more enjoyable. Featuring player-versus-player (PvP)-focused Seasonal Worlds, Expedition upgrades, bug fixes, and more, Season 7 included new content for adventurers of all levels and playstyles.
In February, New World: Aeternum players engaged in the “Siege of Sulfur” Event, where players can team up with more than 10 max-level players to defend sandwurm eggs from waves of Sulfur Elementals after their Dunewalker Mage carts broke down transporting the eggs. As players rushed to provide support at locations across Brightwood, Ebonscale Reach, Edengrove, Mourningdale, and Brimstone Sands, they faced increasingly difficult waves of Sulfur Elementals, including the Remnant of the Unmaker.
THRONE AND LIBERTY Welcomed “Wilds of Talandre”
In early March, the THRONE AND LIBERTY team launched the free expansion “Wilds of Talandre.” This weighty update came with fresh content, new dungeons, a weapon upgrade, lifestyle changes, and plenty more.
Talandre represents a new zone and the next chapter in the story of THRONE AND LIBERTY. As adventurers journey through Talandre, they will encounter Solo Dungeons, 3-Star Dungeons, Nebula Island, and a Weapon Mastery Revamp, along with a New Artifact System.
Amazon Games at D.I.C.E. Summit and GDC
D.I.C.E. photo credits: Laura Kinser Studios
Of course, the games industry’s first quarter includes two of its biggest calendar events in D.I.C.E. and GDC, and Amazon Games showed up at both in force.
In February, Laura Naviaux Sturr, GM of Operations at Amazon Games, took the stage at D.I.C.E. to deliver her talk “Learning from the Past to Shape the Future of Games,” where she shared some of her most critical, learn-from moments garnered from her more than 25 years in the industry.
The session provided a candid look at several groundbreaking initiatives from within the industry — all of which have been reimagined by others for today’s gamers — and examined the initial goal, what worked or went wrong, and how those moments have shaped her approach to planning for long-term success in games. You can watch Laura’s talk in full below, and check out her post-talk interview with VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi, where the pair spoke in more detail about the topics discussed within her talk.
Also at the D.I.C.E. Summit, Sarah Anderson, Global Head of Marketing and Partnerships, led industry peers in two roundtable sessions focused on the topic of “Building Long-Lasting Game Franchises for Future Generations.” During the sessions, each group discussed the many paths that developers and publishers can explore when it comes to adding longevity to their game franchises in this current landscape.
In March, Amazon Games descended upon GDC in San Francisco, where the team met up with industry analysts, media, and industry partners from around the world. Sarah Anderson took to the stage, this time as a panelist at the Women in Games International (WIGI) 20th Anniversary event at GDC. Along with industry peers from Roblox and Dragon Snack Games, the panel discussed the accomplishments, lessons learned, and insights garnered from their career journeys as women in the games industry.
Catch Up on the Latest Episodes of ‘Meet the Makers’!
Finally, the team at Amazon Games has released several new episodes of its video series ‘Meet the Makers,’ with the most recent focused on Kat Schroeder, Head of Business Intelligence at Amazon Games, who gives us a rare glimpse into her world and how her team converts data into actionable insights.
As we dive into the next quarter, stay tuned to Amazon Games for all the updates and games news coming soon!
