Amidst a massive layoff at Amazon, which cut 14,000+ employees and killed further development of New World: Aeternum, has also reportedly killed (for a second time) the Lord of the Rings MMO that was in production at Amazon Game Studios.
Spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, a now former Amazon Game Studios senior gameplay engineer, Ashleigh Amrine, confirmed in a post on her personal LinkedIn page that the “fledgling Lord of the Rings game” was part of the cuts at Amazon.
“This morning I was part of layoffs at Amazon Games, alongside my incredibly talented peers on New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings game (ya’ll would have loved it),” Amrine writes. “It’s always tough to see such a strong team go through something like this – I’ve been lucky to work with some of the most skilled, creative, and kind developers I’ve ever met here.”
Amazon has yet to officially confirm that its Lord of the Rings game, which had already been cancelled once before due to a contract dispute with Tencent, has been cancelled again now as part of these layoffs, after it was revived in 2023.
When it was confirmed that further development on New World had ceased, we reached out to Amazon for a comment on the status of the Lord of the Rings MMO. But Amrine’s statement here, compounded with the statement from Steve Boom, Amazon’s head of audio, Twitch and games, seems to confirm what we already suspected, that we will not see a new Lord of the Rings MMO anytime soon.
Boom called the cuts to Amazon Game Studios “significant” and specifically called out MMOs as a genre in which Amazon is halting first-party development work.
After the MMO was revived for the first time in 2023, we also learned it would be built on a next-generation version of the engine that was used to develop New World. A little more than a year after its revival, Amazon Game Studios boss Christoph Hartmann stated that the Lord of the Rings MMO was still in “early” stages, which made sense given that production had only picked back up a year prior.
Unfortunately, that early status also means it makes sense for Amazon to cut its losses without hesitation, as it was unclear how much work from the previous iteration of the game would be picked up following its first cancellation, and it might’ve been starting from scratch.
We’ll update this article if Amazon does make a more official comment on the status of the Lord of the Rings MMO. For now, though, don’t hold your breath on it being shown off at a future Summer Game Fest or similar event.
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