Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings MMO appears to have been canceled as part of mass layoffs that have hit the company’s gaming business tough.
This week, Amazon confirmed that it is moving away from creating fresh content for its MMO game, New Worldin the face of massive layoffs that affected 14,000 positions in the company. According to a report by Bloombergthese layoffs included “significant” cuts to Amazon’s video game business, which will result in reduced development and staff layoffs primarily at Amazon’s offices in Irvine and San Diego. Bloomberg said Amazon is cutting back on spending, especially on MMO games.
This has raised concerns about the Lord of the Rings MMO. Now one of the former Amazon Games developers affected by the cuts has indicated that the game has indeed gone bankrupt.
“This morning I participated in a layoff at Amazon Games with my incredibly talented colleagues at New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings game (everyone would love it),” the creator said in a now-deleted LinkedIn post.
“It’s always difficult to watch such a strong team go through something like this – I’m lucky to work with some of the most talented, creative and kind developers I’ve ever met here.”
The phrase “everyone would love it” actually suggests that The Lord of the Rings is no longer alive. Neither Amazon nor Lord of the Rings rights holder Embracer responded to IGN’s request for comment.
Although The Lord of the Rings was announced in 2023in August last year Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann told IGN it was still early days. “We’re still trying to find the hook, find the idea of what it’s about, because we don’t want to just go and do the same thing over again,” Hartmann said at the time.
“While it’s tempting at times with an existing IP, that’s not what this is about. You have to find a new twist, and I think we’re still in that period where we really want to find out what might be the core, what might be what’s different from all the other games on the market. So it’s still a little early.”
In 2023, Embracer stated that it needed to “use The Lord of the Rings in a very significant way”, turning it into “one of the largest gaming franchises in the world”. Embracer bought the rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in August 2022 and announced plans to explore the possibility of creating fresh games, films and more based on the famed intellectual property shortly thereafter.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has canceled the Lord of the Rings MMO. In 2021, it put on hold the Lord of the Rings MMORPG, which was first announced in 2019 following a contract dispute with Tencent.
Wesley is the news director at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be reached at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
