Breakaway Killed Off Once And For All By Amazon Game Studios

Back in the 2016, the then-freshly-formed Amazon Game Studios revealed its first three big titles: Breakaway, New World, and Crucible. Of these, Breakaway seemed to be the furthest along in development and Amazon's best chance to break into the growing eSports scene. Unfortunately, it seems Breakaway wasn't meant to be.

Toward the end of the last year, we heard rumors that Breakaway had been put on permanent hiatus after a number of alpha tests. Amazon remained silent on the issue until this weekend, when it confirmed on Reddit that Breakaway has been officially canceled.

"Since our last announcement, we have worked to implement community feedback and iterate on Breakaway's core gameplay," Amazon wrote. "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."

It's a shame, because Breakaway showed a lot of promise. The game was, for lack of a better term, a competitive sports brawler that had two teams of four duking it out as they attempted to carry a relic into the other team's endzone. It was developed with Twitch streaming in mind, but that focus on Twitch integration may have contributed to its demise, as it was only available through the Twitch launcher and not through more popular platforms like Steam.

In the end, whether it was lack of exposure or lack of interest in general, it seems Breakaway has been killed off for good. As far as we know, Amazon Game Studios' two other projects – New World and Crucible – are still in development, but the developer has been rather silent on those two games. We'll see what the future holds for Amazon Game Studios soon enough, but canceling its most visible game isn't a very encouraging sign. Stay tuned.