The current Amazon layoffs closely affected its gaming division, and now a former developer’s LinkedIn submit implies that the Lord of the Rings MMO in improvement has nobody engaged on it and is probably going cancelled.
The wording on the now-unavailable submit by a former senior gameplay engineer doesn’t explicitly verify cancellation, and Amazon hasn’t formally introduced it—in contrast to how they introduced New World will now not obtain updates. Nonetheless, it’s understood that everybody, or no less than most individuals engaged on the LOTR sport, is now not at Amazon because of being included within the 14,000 cuts introduced final Tuesday.
That is the second time Amazon has didn’t launch this Lord of the Rings MMO. Again in 2021, after two years of improvement, the corporate introduced the primary cancellation shortly after Tencent acquired considered one of their companion builders in China, Leyou Applied sciences. Following this acquisition, Amazon claimed it couldn’t attain new phrases with Tencent, and improvement needed to be halted.
Two years later, in 2023, Amazon partnered with Embracer Group and Center-earth Enterprises to recreate the Lord of the Rings sport, now with out Tencent’s affect. They have been anticipating an open-world MMO journey to lastly launch with out exterior interference. However Amazon couldn’t survive its personal challenges. This week, after one other two-year cycle, the way forward for Lord of the Rings seems to be bleak.
It’s attention-grabbing how each main information about this sport follows a two-year cycle: first announcement in 2019, cancellation in 2021, new improvement in 2023, and a possible second cancellation in 2025. It’s unclear if this displays some bi-annual cycle inside Amazon, however it hints that if the corporate ever desires to reuse Lord of the Rings belongings, we’ll most likely solely hear about it two years from now.
We’re nonetheless ready for Amazon to formally verify or deny this cancellation. But it surely seems to be grim for what may have been an MMO based mostly on a massively profitable franchise which may have elevated Amazon Video games to a giant developer standing.
