2026-09-03T00:00:00Z 0hphttps://0hp.com/ https://0hp.com/games/tl/feed.xml https://0hp.com/patches/throne-and-liberty-4-9-0-nix-difficulty/ 2026-09-03T00:00:00Z 2026-08-30T00:00:00Z

Update 4.9.0 added a weapon tier above the top one, cut difficulty across the Nix region, and put purchasable power materials behind the paid reward track.

<p>Throne and Liberty's update 4.9.0 followed roughly three hours of downtime, which the notes said would begin at 10:30 p.m. Pacific on <strong>26 August 2026</strong>. The <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2429640/view/1842212951297672">patch notes on Steam</a> are dominated by a single theme. Most of what happens in Nix, which is the region of the map where the current content lives, now takes less time, fewer people, or both.</p> <p>Throne and Liberty is a fantasy world made by NCSOFT, which is a Korean studio, and released in the West by Amazon Games, Amazon's own game division. The Tumgir Vault below is an instanced dungeon inside Nix, and a Skill Core is an equippable item that changes how one of your skills works.</p> <h2>The difficulty pass, in numbers</h2> <table> <thead> <tr> <th>Where</th> <th>Change</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Tumgir Vault</td> <td>Chest interaction time down 30%, Skill Core acquisition down 50%, elevator sequences down 40%</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Tumgir Vault</td> <td>Crowd control removed from named enemies on floors 2 and 4 and reduced on floor 3; the Frost effect removed on floor 1</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Ritual of Frost</td> <td>Frost Curses per magic circle down from 29 to 9</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Frozen Moment</td> <td>Three waves down to two, survival per wave up from 45 to 60 seconds</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Tumgir Hollow</td> <td>Water Energy requirement down from 15 to 10, geyser reactivation 60% faster</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Scarlet Dream, Primal Trial, Hall of Repentance and others</td> <td>Maximum participants cut from 6 to 3</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Remnants of Nix</td> <td>Masarax now spawns at a fixed location with a 30% chance at 15 minutes, more rewards, less difficulty</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>Crowd control, in that second row, is the family of effects that stun, freeze or otherwise stop you acting.</p> <h2>Our take: what it means for players</h2> <p>The cuts are the right call, and the reason for them is not flattering.</p> <p>Instanced events that allowed up to six players now cap at three, and the interaction timers come down by 30 to 60 percent. The notes give the changes and no reason for them. Our reading is a studio concluding that content gated on assembling six people was gating on something its players could not supply. Better to fix it than leave it standing empty, and the fixes are real: faster chests, fewer curses, fewer waves, and Masarax now spawning in a fixed spot instead of a random one.</p> <p>What we will not wave through is the note at the bottom about the Battle Pass, which is this game's seasonal reward track and has a paid tier. Alongside Battle Pass: Smoldering Vow, the update says that moving forward, Battle Pass event shops will contain a Premium section. It sells extra Trait Unlockstone Fragments, Trait Enchantment Stone Fragments and Heroic Trait Unlockstone Fragments to players who have bought the Premium Pass. A Trait is a small permanent bonus attached to a piece of gear, so those are character power materials rather than cosmetics. Putting more of them behind a purchase is the plainest form of paying for strength there is. A game that has just spent a patch making its content reachable should not spend the same patch making its progression purchasable.</p> <p>The Snowsoul tier deserves a flag of its own, for a different reason. A new weapon rank above Ascended Archboss gear, crafted from the weapon you already own, resets the top of the ladder for everyone who finished the last one. An Archboss is the game's largest open-world boss, fought by many players at once. That is the treadmill working as designed, and it is at least earned through Ascended Deluzhnoa and Ascended Giant Cordy rather than sold.</p> <h2>What's next</h2> <p>By the same notes, Vegamor has moved to the end of September and the Primordial Wanderer milestone now ends <strong>24 September 2026</strong>. Both dates are on <a href="https://0hp.com/calendar/">the calendar</a> with the day we last checked them. The handover of this game's Western publishing, which we covered from Amazon's own announcement, is on <a href="https://0hp.com/sunsets/">the sunset tracker</a>.</p> https://0hp.com/news/amazon-hands-back-throne-and-liberty-and-lost-ark/ 2026-09-03T00:00:00Z 2026-08-27T00:00:00Z

Amazon is transferring Throne and Liberty to FirstSpark Games and NCSOFT in late 2026, and Lost Ark to Smilegate in early 2027. Both announced the same day.

<p>Amazon Game Studios is handing two of the online worlds it published back to Korea. On 12 August 2026 it announced, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2429640/view/1840944183773314">in a post about Throne and Liberty</a>, that day-to-day running of that game moves to two other companies from <strong>the last quarter of 2026</strong>. A near-identical post the same day sent Lost Ark back to Smilegate in <strong>early 2027</strong>.</p> <p>Who is who, in a line. Throne and Liberty goes to FirstSpark Games, which is the studio that develops it, and to NCSOFT, its Korean owner. Lost Ark goes to Smilegate, the Korean studio behind that one. Amazon Game Studios published both in the West. And both are MMOs, which stands for massively multiplayer online games, the kind thousands of people share at once.</p> <h2>Two handovers, side by side</h2> <table> <thead> <tr> <th></th> <th>Throne and Liberty</th> <th>Lost Ark</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Going to</td> <td>FirstSpark Games and NCSOFT</td> <td>Smilegate</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Amazon's stated timing</td> <td>Starting the last quarter of 2026</td> <td>Starting early 2027</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Time Amazon published it</td> <td>Nearly two years</td> <td>Nearly five years</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Exact date given</td> <td>No</td> <td>No</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Shutdown mentioned</td> <td>No</td> <td>No</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Amazon's framing</td> <td>Handing the game back to the developers</td> <td>Handing the game back to the developers</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>Neither post gives a day, and both use the same phrase about returning the game to the people who made it. Worth noticing, given both went out the same day.</p> <h2>Our take: what it means for players</h2> <p>A handover is a different thing from a shutdown, and we want that stated before anything else. The two get conflated every time, and the conflation costs a game its population.</p> <p>Both worlds keep running. What changes is who answers when something breaks, who funds the Western translation, and who decides the shop. Neither post says anything about any of that. Our expectation is that an operator with a direct line to the developers ships regional content faster, and that the shop is the thing to watch, because a new operator sets its own pricing and nobody has published theirs.</p> <p>The uncomfortable read is what these two posts say together, and we will label it as ours rather than Amazon's. Amazon spent nearly five years on one of these games and nearly two on the other, and announced both exits on one day. Both posts give the same reason, and it is a generous one: handing the game back to the developers, so their passion for it can keep being realised. Our reading is that a reason this warm, arriving twice on one morning, is also a judgement about the business of running these games in the West. Players should weigh it that way rather than as a verdict on the worlds they play in.</p> <p>Amazon's third online world is on a different footing again. New World is its colonial-era fantasy game, and we covered its dated shutdown from Amazon's own separate notice.</p> <p>What we would ask for is a date. A quarter is not a date, and an account holder with a paid reward track or an unspent currency balance is entitled to know the day their relationship changes hands. Until one is published, everything downstream of it, including whether balances carry, is a question nobody can answer.</p> <h2>What's next</h2> <p>Both transfers sit on <a href="https://0hp.com/sunsets/">the sunset tracker</a> as handovers rather than shutdowns, with the windows the publishers actually gave and the day we last checked each. New World's shutdown is on the same page, with the date Amazon gave in its own notice.</p>