Amazon Video games inks publishing pact with indie studio Disruptive for brand spanking new action-adventure title

Amazon Games will publish an upcoming, unnamed project from Disruptive Games, an indie game developer based in Berkeley, Calif., the company announced Thursday.

The move represents another expansion of Amazon’s efforts as a publisher of other studios’ games, following the successful U.S. launch of Smilegate RPG’s Lost Ark earlier this year.

Disruptive’s unnamed project is said to be an “online multiplayer action-adventure game based on a new [intellectual property],” intended for multiple platforms, and “built for both cooperative and competitive play.”

This is the third game Amazon has officially announced as a publisher, after last year’s news that it would publish a “creative online co-op experience” from the English indie studio Glowmade. In a news release, Amazon confirmed that it has multiple other “unannounced projects” in development, both internally and with external studios.

If there’s a single trend in what Amazon’s announced so far, it’s in that almost all of its projects, internally and externally developed, seem to have targeted the online gaming market. This includes its 2021 massively-multiplayer RPG New World, which is struggling; Lost Ark, which very much is not; and the stated plan for its studio in Montreal, which it founded in March 2021.

“At Amazon Games, we’re focused on developing and publishing high-quality games that foster strong communities and keep people playing for years to come,” Amazon Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann said in a statement.

“We’re accomplishing this by creating our own IPs and selectively publishing external projects from stellar teams like Disruptive Games,” he added.

Disruptive, founded in 2009, bills itself as a “multiplayer game development studio.” Its last game was the 2019 virtual reality “hero shooter” Megalith, which was published by Sony for PlayStation VR.

It’s also distinguished itself as a work-for-hire team. Disruptive’s previous credits include effects, optimization, console ports, and support on games such as Godfall, Diablo II: Resurrected, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2.