Rust Director ‘Offers’ $25 Million to Keep New World: Aeternum Alive

It was recently confirmed that Amazon’s New World: Aeternum will be shut down next year, going offline forever and locking players out of the game they might have loved for a good while. The MMORPG was released in September 2021, soaring to epic player counts, but it quickly dwindled and the ever-marching progress of time saw the game fall out of favor fast.

Following the announcement that New World: Aeternum will be taken offline in 2027, an unlikely figure stood up and offered $25 million to keep the game alive, because ‘games should never die.’

Will Facepunch Keep New World: Aeternum Alive?

On social media, Alistair McFarlane, the director of Rust and COO at Facepunch Studios, said:

25m, final offer Amazon Games

Followed by a statement:

Games should never die.

The original post was made in response to a Facepunch employee joking that they’d asked ‘Ali’ to buy New World for them, but he told them to f*** off. This line is enough to make users doubt the validity of McFarlane’s messages, but who knows? We’ve seen stranger things.

As the comments unfolded, McFarlane explained when asked what Amazon should do for the players:

As with everything we do at Facepunch, empower the community. Give them control, make servers publicly hostable. A game will live forever in the hands of a dedicated community.

In October 2025, Amazon issued layoffs and ended any more development on New World: Aeternum, and on January 15, it was revealed that the game would be taken offline forever in 2027.

This has been a major point of contention in the gaming space for the longest time. It surfaced most recently (and prolifically) with Ubisoft’s The Crew being pulled offline, a situation that spawned a court case, raised by disgruntled fans.

For the last few years, the concept of online-only games ending development has been a major debate, with many claiming that games should never, ever go offline.

It seems highly unlikely that Facepunch Studios will acquire New World: Aeternum, but what do you think? Do you think it’s up to other studios to keep games alive when they’re shut down by their creators? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.

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