Rust director offers Amazon $25 million to save its dying MMO New World, with Hytale’s creator extending support — “Games should never die”

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Amazon Game Studios revealed this week that it will be shutting down its online game, New World, at the end of January. The game has been removed from all stores and is no longer available to buy.

New World initially attracted almost a million players on Steam when it launched, but quickly lost players due to uninteresting quests and a disappointing endgame. Despite this, the lead developer from the hugely successful survival game, Rust, is now stepping in to try and revive it.

Alistair McFarlane, who leads development at Rust creator Facepunch Studios, has publicly offered Amazon $25 million to acquire their game New World. He explained his reasoning by saying that games deserve to live on, even after their original developers move on.

I saw this offer posted in a thread where someone was jokingly asking Todd McFarlane to buy them a copy of New World. It definitely *seemed* like a joke, honestly – a playful response to another developer’s comment. But you never know with McFarlane! If Amazon actually showed some interest in the idea, maybe he’d actually do it. It’s a wild thought, but hey, that’s what makes it fun to speculate about!

Whether the current offer is genuine or not, Todd McFarlane has a key suggestion for the developers of New World: let players have more control. Like Facepunch Studios always does, he recommends giving the community the ability to host their own servers. He believes a dedicated community is what keeps a game alive for the long term.

Games should never die.January 15, 2026

Several other developers also reacted to McFarlane’s idea. Palworld’s communications director, Bucky, playfully offered to split the costs if they released the original Northwest alpha as a separate game mode, and McFarlane excitedly agreed.

Simon Collins-Laflamme, the creator of the popular new sandbox RPG Hytale (inspired by Minecraft and recently released in Early Access), offered some advice. He tweeted, “If you need help with buying games that have been cancelled, let me know.”

Collins-Laflamme is familiar with game development transitions. His team, Hypixel Studios, was bought by Riot Games in 2020 to help create the game Hytale. Although Riot later canceled Hytale and closed Hypixel Studios last year, Collins-Laflamme quickly stepped in, repurchased the project, and released it as an early access game.

Whether Todd McFarlane’s $25 million offer for New World will succeed remains to be seen, but it would be fantastic if it did. While the game faced many challenges, a dedicated community did enjoy it, and it had plenty of positive aspects. It was visually appealing, fun to play, featured interesting combat, and offered impressive large-scale PvP battles with up to 100 players.

Okay, so this is a bit ridiculous. I reached out to Amazon about potentially buying New World, and honestly? All I’ve gotten back is a notification that my beef jerky is arriving tomorrow. I posted about it online – I mean, you gotta laugh, right? – but it’s just… yeah, that’s the extent of their response so far.

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2026-01-16 23:39