It Looks Like Amazon's The Lord of the Rings MMO Is Dead

Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings MMO appears to person been canceled arsenic portion of sweeping layoffs that deed the company’s gaming concern hard.

This week, Amazon confirmed it was walking distant from making caller contented for its MMO, New World, amid immense layoffs affecting 14,000 roles astatine the company. According to a study by Bloomberg, these layoffs included “significant” cuts to Amazon’s video crippled operation, which volition trim improvement enactment and layoff unit chiefly successful its Irvine and San Diego offices. Bloomberg said Amazon was cutting backmost particularly connected MMOs.

That sparked interest for The Lord of the Rings MMO. Now, 1 erstwhile Amazon Games developer deed by the cuts has indicated the crippled has so fallen by the wayside.

“This greeting I was portion of the layoffs astatine Amazon Games, alongside my incredibly talented peers connected New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings crippled (y'all would person loved it),” the developer said successful a now-deleted station connected LinkedIn.

“It’s ever pugnacious to spot specified a beardown squad spell done thing similar this — I’ve been fortunate to enactment with immoderate of the astir skilled, creative, and benignant developers I’ve ever met here.”

The enactment “y'all would person loved it,” does suggest The Lord of the Rings is present dead. Neither Amazon nor Lord of the rings rights holder Embracer person responded to IGN’s petition for comment.

Although The Lord of the Rings was announced successful 2023, successful August past year, Amazon Games brag Christoph Hartmann told IGN it was inactive aboriginal days. "We're inactive trying to find the hook, find that thought of what it is due to the fact that we don't conscionable privation to spell and bash the aforesaid happening over," Hartmann said astatine the time.

"While it's tempting sometimes with an existing IP, that's not the constituent of doing it. You've got to find a caller twist, and we're still, I think, successful that play wherever we truly privation to find retired what could beryllium the hook, what could beryllium the happening which is antithetic to each the different games retired there. So it's a small spot early.”

In 2023, Embracer said it needed to beryllium "exploiting Lord of the Rings successful a precise important fashion" by turning it into “one of the biggest gaming franchises successful the world.” Embracer bought the rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit successful August 2022 and announced plans to research opportunities to make caller games, movies, and much based connected the celebrated intelligence spot soon after.

This isn’t the archetypal clip Amazon has canceled a Lord of the Rings MMO. In 2021, it halted a Lord of the Rings MMORPG that was archetypal announced successful 2019 amid a declaration quality with Tencent.

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].