Amazon confirms that Breakaway is on hiatus
Is Breakaway dead? We don’t know for sure, but the rumors started flying yesterday, and the latest official word certainly reads like a death certificate. In the announcement, Amazon has announced that Breakaway is going on hiatus while the core gameplay experience gets retooled, with no actual timeframe for when this will take place. It’s possible that it’s temporary, but it’s also possible that this will result in the game quietly slipping from memory.
There’s no word about how this will affect any other titles in development or even the core team behind the game (or Amazon’s other games), although the prospect of wildly retooling what was originally meant to be the first launch title has to sting a bit. We’ll keep our ears to the ground for more information, but don’t expect more news to be forthcoming quickly.
This is relatively normal in game development. You develop, you find issues, you change things, repeat ad nauseum.
I hope they treat this game like a terrorism suspect The U.S. put on rendition to a third world country. Just lock the game up in a dark room and forget/deny it ever existed. I’m so tired of these “competitive shooters”.
Use the manpower/resources on the MMO (New World) which has more potential vs it’s competition than Breakway could have ever had with theirs.
Didn’t really care about this game other than to see the quality and polish they were going to give to it. Just out of curiosities sake for the MMO they are doing, New World
Good call on their part in my opinion. As a new game studio they need to make a splash on their entree to the market, not a flop. With the oversaturation of arena shooters, and battleborn + lawbreakers performance, I think this game would not make the impact they need.
I’m baffled how people keep equating this game to shooters when Smite is probably the closest analogue. Its perhaps more Arena-ish than a true MOBA, but nothing about 3rd person semi-melee is remotely similar in gameplay to an FPS.
The distinction is really important because Amazon still has a separate competitive FPS project of some kind.
I’ve never played or watched it, only going off what people have said, what I’ve read, or screenshots. So I apologize for misunderstanding the nature of the game.
Even if it’s not the same though, it’s a marketing issue on their part then that a lot of people are classifying it as the wrong genre. That makes it an even bigger problem as people who are looking for that style of game may buy in hoping for that (and being disappointed), and those who don’t like that genre may never even try it out.
I still stand by my opinion hat delaying (or cancelling) this game as the first game they release as a studio is a smart move.
I guess because in these games all you do is run around “shooting” at other people in a box in a repetitive, boring fashion… hence shooters?
That’s kind of weird, it seemed really, really far along, and they’ve been showing it on Twitch a lot. I can’t imagine it’ll get cancelled after that much showcasing.
Like pepperzine said above you – Amazon probably doesn’t want to be a minor player in any genre. Being 5th or worse likely hurts their overall brand – which is endlessly more important than making a few dollars on this or that game.
I think this is a reason they exited the mobile phone market so quickly. That cost them far more than this game did.
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I sincerely wonder if Jeff knows he has a video game studio or not. My guess is he knows of it’s existence but has no idea what games are being developed for it.
Agreed, he does make for a good icon though:)
*ardently hoping he builds his new shop in my city Atlanta*
Is/was this the MMO they were working on?
No, that’s “New World”. Supposedly information that starts coming out next year. Breakaway is a competitive PvP game.
Crap idea done poorly … Its death is not a surprise ….Are like all gaming companies run by people who don’t know jack about anything gaming ……
I used to think I was angry.
Watched gameplay videos, signed up for closed access, got it, played a couple of battles. It’s cool. Except the ball thingy is stupid. I wish it was just a deathmatch or something else.
The only competitive pvp mode I ever liked in a game was Walatiki Temple in WildStar.