Amazon has canceled its second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMO. recent mass layoffsaccording to a former senior gameplay engineer at Amazon Games.
The engineer in question is Ashley Amrin, who announced yesterday that she had lost her job at LinkedIn. “This morning I participated in layoffs at Amazon Games along with my incredibly talented colleagues at New World and our young Lord of the Rings game (you would love that),” she said. wrote. I've reached out to Amazon for comment.
Colonial fantasy New World has already been confirmed to be ceasing development following the recent Nighthaven update as part of a company-wide move away from MMOs. Amazon will keep the servers warm until 2026 and says it will give six months' notice before making any changes that would make the game unplayable.
Amazon's first online multiplayer game, LOTR, was created in collaboration with Chinese company Leyou, which was announced in 2019. met an unfortunate end in 2021 thanks to an apparent contractual dispute after Leyou was acquired by Tencent. Amazon presented the second MMO LOTR in 2023after partnering with new Middle-earth rights holder Embracer. They called it an “ongoing open-world MMO adventure” spanning events Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but other than that we've never heard much about this project.
“It’s always hard to see such a strong team go through something like this,” Amrin wrote in a post yesterday. “I have been fortunate to work with some of the most experienced, creative and kind developers I have ever met here.”
It is claimed that 14,000 people will lose their jobs as a result of Amazon's latest cuts. Good luck to all those affected. At the risk of sounding silly, here is an encouraging addition to the books: “In the end, the Shadow was but a small and fleeting thing: light and sublime beauty were forever beyond its reach.”
If you're desperate to roam Middle-earth in company, Standing Stone and Daybreak's Lord of the Rings online still has a small but stable audience, almost two decades since its launch. Recent community activities include finally made the desperately low-level hobbits pilgrimage to Mount Doom.
