Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO appears to be dead

Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO appears to have been canceled as part of a massive layoff that has hit the company's gaming business hard.

This week, Amazon confirms it will no longer produce new content for its MMO, New Worldmassive layoffs affecting the company’s 14,000 employees. according to a report BloombergThose layoffs include “significant” cuts to Amazon's video games business, which will reduce development work and layoffs primarily in its Irvine and San Diego offices. Bloomberg said that Amazon is cutting expenses, especially in its MMO business.

This raises concerns about the Lord of the Rings MMO. Now, a former Amazon game developer hit by layoffs says the game has indeed fallen by the wayside.

“This morning, I joined my talented colleagues on New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings games to participate in layoffs at Amazon Games,” the developer said in a now-deleted post on LinkedIn.

“It's always hard to see such a strong team go through something like this – I'm lucky to work with some of the most skilled, creative, and friendly developers I've come across here.”

The line “you're all going to love it” really signals that Lord of the Rings is now dead. Neither Amazon nor “Lord of the Rings” rights holder Embracer responded to IGN's requests for comment.

Although Lord of the Rings is Announced in 2023last August, Amazon Games boss Christoph Hartmann told IGN It's still early days. “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.”

2023, hugger says It needs to “leverage Lord of the Rings in a very significant way” by turning it into “one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.” Hugger buys rights to 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' In August 2022, it announced plans to explore opportunities to create new games, movies, and more based on famous intellectual property.

This isn't the first time Amazon has canceled a Lord of the Rings MMO game. 2021, It halted the Lord of the Rings MMORPG The news was first announced in 2019 amid a contract dispute with Tencent.

Wesley is IGN News Director. Find him on Twitter: @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or privately at [email protected].