Amazon's slow, shambolic withdrawal from mainstream videogame development continued apace with today's announcement that it has offloaded the free-to-play MOBA March of Giants, which is still in development, onto Ubisoft. The deal will also see Amazon Games Montreal, headed up by former Rainbow Six Siege creative director Xavier Marquis and Ubisoft Toronto managing director Alexandre Parizeau, join Ubisoft as part of its Montreal studio.

"Returning to Ubisoft brings things full circle," said Marquis, the creative director on March of Giants. "We built some of our most meaningful work here, and we're excited to continue developing March of Giants from within Ubisoft. This game has enormous potential, and I know Ubisoft can help us take it to the next level."

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot shared similar sentiments, saying that March of Giants "has a real opportunity to bring something fresh and dynamic to players, and to help Ubisoft compete in one of gaming's biggest arenas."

"We're looking forward to welcoming back Alexandre, Xavier, and many of the seasoned March of Giants team who have previously worked at Ubisoft, and the entire team's ambition, creativity and talent align perfectly with our desire to build bold new experiences for players," Guillemot said. "We look forward to supporting them as they shape the future of this promising new IP."

The MOBA genre can indeed be lucrative, if you happen to be the company that made League of Legends or Dota 2. For everyone else, it's more of a fistfight over the crumbs. Gigantic: Rampage Edition and Seekers of Skyveil both crashed out quickly after launch, and while Smite 2 continues to trundle along, Hi-Rez Studios has struggled badly with layoffs and game shutdowns over the past couple years. The only game with the potential to shake things up in the genre is Deadlock, almost entirely due to the fact it's being developed by Valve.

The response to the March of Giants closed alpha in September might suggest that it's in for a similarly rough ride. Not that the reaction is overly negative, there just doesn't seem to be much of it at all: The "closed alpha recap" post, the most recent update, has drawn a total of six comments, and the game's Steam forum in general is largely devoid of activity; the March of Giants Discord seems similarly moribund.

How likely it is that Ubisoft will be able to turn that around is anyone's guess, although the odds don't strike me as particularly great. But assuming it follows the LoL/Dota 2 pricing scheme, March of Giants does seem like it could be a good fit for Ubisoft's focus on live service games in the future.

Amazon, meanwhile, hasn't completely stepped back from the videogame business. It remains committed to publishing the two new Tomb Raider games announced at The Game Awards 2025, and it also seemingly sees big things in AI-fuelled garbage like Courtroom Chaos Featuring Snoop Dog.

This may not be a great time for Ubisoft to try busting into the MOBA biz, but at least it's better than that.

I'm sure no video game developers enjoy hearing negative feedback during playtests, but for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 developers, unhappy customers were a happy sign they were making the historical RPG as punishing as they'd wanted.

"We had playtests where some players started a game, did something wrong, immediately got arrested, and gave negative feedback," Warhorse lead designer Prokop Jirsa tells GamesRadar+. "We had the strength to say, 'Yes, that's what we want.'"

"We want the player at the beginning to feel extremely weak," he explains, "because then the validation of gaining strength feels earned." Jirsa remembers it feeling "scary" to commit to this style of slow progression – opposing the culture of instant gratification Warhorse thinks has infected other games.

But the success of the first Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 in 2018 helped ease some of Warhorse's fears. "Even though," Jirsa says, "there were many discussions [asking] 'Are we really going the right way? Are we really into these survival elements, do we really want to take everything from the player at the beginning? Even their place to sleep?'"

Still, Jirsa knows audiences are versatile. It isn't impossible for hard games to find a loving home, and he gives FromSoftware as an example: "With Dark Souls and Elden Ring, they took something that was very niche to the mainstream audience and were very successful."

"I honestly believe there's big potential for original ideas that, if they were given a chance to be polished, could reach mainstream," he says.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 developers made my favorite RPG of 2025 by trusting their original vision: "We had the strength to say, 'Yes, that's what we want.'"