Amazon cuts 14,000 jobs as MMO New World goes into maintenance mode – but what happened to its Lord of the Rings MMO?
Blog Andrew Joseph 29 Oct , 2025 0
Amazon is giving up on making new content from its MMOs, New Worldmassive layoffs affecting the company's 14,000 employees. Now, there are concerns about the status of its Lord of the Rings MMO.
Yesterday, October 28, Amazon confirmed that it would lay off up to 14,000 employees. This is one of the largest layoffs the tech giant has ever seen, and comes as other companies in the tech space, including Microsoft and Meta, have made similar significant layoffs.
This also comes at a time when Amazon is doing well. So why do they happen? Artificial intelligence, basically. exist a letter to employeesBeth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, said:
Some may ask why we are reducing positions when the company is doing well. Across our business, we deliver exceptional customer experiences, innovate rapidly, and generate strong business results every day. What we need to remember is that the world is changing rapidly. This new generation of artificial intelligence is the most transformative technology since the advent of the internet, enabling businesses to innovate faster than ever before (in existing segments and entirely new ones). We firmly believe that we need a leaner organization with fewer layers and more ownership to serve our customers and business as quickly as possible.
What does this mean for Amazon's gaming business? according to a report Bloombergnothing to say. Amazon's video game business will be making “significant” cuts, which will reduce development work and layoffs primarily in its Irvine and San Diego offices.
New world changes are part of that, and while the game will remain online through 2026, it's basically the beginning of the end for the once hugely popular MMO. Let's remember that New World was Amazon's rare hit in the video game space, followed by multiple flops that resulted in the game and studio closing. This MMO, set in the United States in the 1600s, has a huge number of players on Steam. As early as 2021, the number of simultaneous online players on the Valve platform reached a whopping 913,634. However, player numbers have dropped significantly since that peak.
Bloomberg said Amazon is cutting back on its MMO business but will continue to develop Amazon Games Montreal's strategic “March of Giants”, the new “Tomb Raider” game being developed by Crystal Dynamics, and “casual and artificial intelligence games” developed for its cloud gaming service Luna. British studio Maverick Games will also continue development of its racing game. Amazon Games also continues to publish externally developed games such as Lost Ark and Thrones and Freedom in Western markets.
Amazon is also working hard A homemade “Lord of the Rings” MMOalthough we haven’t heard much about it since Announced in 2023. Last August, Amazon Games boss Christoph Hartmann told IGN The company has 10 games in development and is in talks for “more games.” These include the Tomb Raider and Lord of the Rings MMOs, as well as a new driving game from the former Forza Horizon developer.
However, Hartman insists it's still early days for the Lord of the Rings MMO. “We're still trying to find traction, find the idea of what it is, because we don't want to just do the same thing over and over again,” Hartman said at the time.
“While sometimes existing IP is tempting, that's not the point of doing it. You have to find a fresh twist, and I think we're still in that period where we're really trying to figure out what might be engaging and what might be something different than every other game out there. So it's still early days.”
IGN has asked Amazon for an update on the Lord of the Rings MMO.
There are also a lot of questions about Tomb Raider, a game that has been mired in the Embracer Group. Hartman largely dismissed those concerns, saying developer Crystal Dynamics is “pretty immune to what's going on with Embracer.”
“People are obviously paying attention to what the parent company is doing, but it's never had an impact on resources and it's never led to any changes in their management, so they're fine. I mean, making a new Tomb Raider, the bar is so high. The longer you do it, the expectations get higher, so it's a huge undertaking, but things are progressing. I mean, there are some really good ideas here,” Hartman said.
“Obviously, we wouldn't share any information with you even if we wanted to, but things are going well and things are moving forward. From what I understand, Crystal is fairly protected because when you look at it before… they've been through a few ownership changes before and this is not completely new to them.”
Crystal Dynamics recently laid off multiple employees after Microsoft canceled Perfect Dark reboot. At the time, the studio insisted that Tomb Raider was still in development and was not affected by the decision.
Crystal Dynamics was originally brought in to revive the Perfect Dark project, which had been struggling to make progress with former co-developer certain Affinity. Crystal was later acquired by Embracer Group in 2022, when the studio had 273 employees across offices in Austin, Bellevue and San Mateo. Crystal laid off 10 employees in 2023 and 17 more earlier this year. It's unclear how many people remain.
Wesley is IGN News Director. Find him on Twitter: @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or privately at [email protected].