Amazon kills its fantasy sports game Breakaway

Amazon’s in-house game studio has put an end to development on Breakaway, the competitive fantasy sport brawler that Amazon Game Studios announced in 2016. In a statement posted to Reddit, developers announced that the game is “no longer in active development.”

Breakaway’s cancellation was confirmed this past weekend. Amazon Game Studios’ previous update on the game indicated that the development team was overhauling the title and taking “the time to iterate and evolve Breakaway’s core gameplay.” That was in the wake of a softer reboot of the game that amplified the game’s fantasy elements and redesigned its cast of characters.

Here’s Amazon Game Studios’ update on Breakaway from the game’s subreddit:

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

We remain exceptionally proud of the team’s work, and feel privileged to have been a part of such a dedicated and enthusiastic community. We will reach out to this channel as soon as we have news to share regarding our new projects, and if a thunderbolt of inspiration strikes that leads us back to Breakaway, you’ll be the first to know.

Breakaway was officially announced in 2016. The game was originally described as a “mythological sport brawler built for fast action, teamwork, and live-streaming” in which players build turrets, traps and shields on a playfield. Players fight to control the Relic — Breakaway’s ball — and use it score on their opponent’s goal. The game had built-in livestreaming features, thanks to Amazon’s ownership of Twitch.

We played Breakaway at Amazon Game Studios in 2016.

Breakaway was one of three announced projects in development at Amazon Game Studios. The other two are New World, a massively multiplayer sandbox game, and Crucible, a sci-fi survival game. Those titles are still listed on the studio’s website. Amazon announced a new San Diego-based branch of Amazon Game Studios, which is being led by EverQuest co-creator John Smedley, in 2017.