Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO Reportedly Canceled
▼ Summary
– Amazon is halting significant MMO development work and has canceled a Lord of the Rings MMO in partnership with Embracer due to layoffs.
– A former senior gameplay engineer confirmed the layoffs affected teams working on New World and the Lord of the Rings game.
– Amazon will no longer provide new content updates for its in-house MMO New World: Aeternum, though servers will remain active until 2026.
– The company will continue to support two published MMOs, Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark, as confirmed by a spokesperson.
– This was Amazon’s second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMO, following a previous project announced in 2019 and canceled two years later.
The planned Lord of the Rings MMO from Amazon Games has reportedly been canceled following a wave of company layoffs. This decision comes directly from an Amazon executive who confirmed the company is halting a substantial portion of its work on massively multiplayer online games. The project was being developed in partnership with Embracer Group.
News of the cancellation surfaced when a former senior gameplay engineer at Amazon Games posted about the situation on LinkedIn. The engineer, who was part of the layoffs, mentioned working on the now-defunct Lord of the Rings title, adding that players “would have loved it.” Attempts to view the original post now result in an error message from LinkedIn. Neither Amazon nor Embracer has provided an official comment regarding the game’s status. Interestingly, the game’s listing remains active on the Amazon Games website at the time of writing.
This strategic shift away from developing its own MMOs was also reflected in the announcement concerning New World: Aeternum. The developers confirmed that while the game’s servers will remain operational through 2026, they will no longer produce new content updates for it. However, Amazon is not exiting the MMO space entirely. A company spokesperson clarified that they will continue to publish and support two other MMOs, Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark.
This marks the second time Amazon has attempted and subsequently abandoned a Lord of the Rings MMO. The company first announced a game set in Middle-earth back in 2019, only to cancel that project two years later. The recently scrapped title, announced in 2023, represented their second endeavor to bring the beloved fantasy world to the MMO genre.
(Source: The Verge)
