A creative player has taken to Amazon Games' New World closed beta to spread the word about some of Amazon's most popular criticisms, including common allegations of overworked laborers and Jeff Bezos' recent Blue Origin spaceflight. While Amazon Games may have little to do directly with everything the company at large is called out for, beta testers of its new MMO have gotten some reminders of who owns it while playing New World.
From a gameplay perspective, the user and critical reception to New World has been relatively warm. This comes in contrast to Amazon Games' prior difficulties with free-to-play multiplayer game Crucible, which was was retroactively pulled from full release back to a beta state before being canceled altogether. New World's closed beta has run much more smoothly and been praised for its combat, but that's not to say it's gone off without a hitch. Most recently, player reports claimed New World was destroying expensive PC graphics cards, but Amazon Games has indicated the hardware issue wasn't the fault of the game. Because of ongoing ethics controversies surrounding Amazon and other large companies, it seems that some take more deep-seated issue with Amazon's latest title than fried GPUs, however.
Twitter user and indie game community director Luulubuu declared on Wednesday that she managed to lay claim to the username "AmazonOfficial" in every New World closed beta server. Using the authority-infused handle, she shared screenshots of the account discussing Amazon Alexa data privacy concerns and Amazon warehouse worker stories of not being given restroom breaks, as well as jabs at former Amazon CEO Bezos for his high-profile trip to the edge of Earth's atmosphere in a suborbital Blue Origin spaceflight. In one New World server, the player activist advised others to pass on the game in favor of Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIV, a less controversial MMO.
There are arguments to be made that the development teams at Amazon Games and Lumberyard aren't directly responsible for reports of labor abuses in Amazon's wider shipping and online shopping enterprise. However, the fact that the success of New World would be a direct benefit to Amazon's bottom line is an unavoidable fact. In the case of this player and other online activists, calling out Bezos in games like GTA Online and New World is an easily accessible way to spread their messages online.
As the game has yet to enter full release, the impacts of internet activism like this will be hard to measure on New World's future successes or failures. Sentiments echoing this small in-game protest have been shared somewhat frequently online since its announcement and open beta launch, but high player counts and positive responses to the raw product could ultimately drown out any dissenting opinions.
New World is available in open beta on PC and launches on the platform on August 31, 2021.
Sources: Luulubuu/Twitter
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