Breakaway, Amazon's 4v4 sports-like Moba Fighter ... thing, was in "public alpha" or some sort of public testing phase a while back.
I tried it out, and thought it was absolutely terrible. It was right on the tail-end of the MOBA hype era (which has thankfully fizzled out and replaced by royales) and way late to the "we want to be an e-sports game like Overwatch too" movement.
Shortly after, Amazon said they were going back to the drawing board. In essence, Breakaway was on layaway.
Just a few days ago, Amazon Game Studios confirmed on Reddit that the game was being abandoned.
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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.
That was the right decision.
And good for them! If a game sucks, developers should move on. Yesterday I remarked that developers need to be more proactive rather than reactive. I think this counts. This is an example of a developer being proactive about knowing what the players want, and what is a waste of time and resources.
I'd love to see the documentation about what they think worked, and what didn't. Along with these smart decisions to halt development, a detailed write-up on what particular components failed would be fascinating. It'll never happen because of competitive intelligence, but wouldn't that be a great way to raise the tide so that all boats get a lift?
One of the most intriguing features of Breakaway's development was Amazon's exploration of streamer integration. We're seeing some of that tech surfacing from other developers on Amazon's Twitch streamer platform. That's a space we should watch closely, because it's a not-too-distance cousin of the highly successful augmented reality.
Now we wait and see what Amazon Games does with their other two games currently in development. We still have Crucible, a third-person, last one standing game of trust and betrayal, and New World, massively multiplayer, open-ended sandbox game. These boats will either rise as a result of Breakaway's utter failure, or sink as well. I find it worth noting that development on both has been closely guarded.