Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO for PS5, Xbox and PC Looks Dead

It appears that Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO is under threat, following massive layoffs reported within the company and its game development departments.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Amazon had made a large number of job cuts totaling around 14,000 employees affected, with “significant” cuts in its gaming departments.

This resulted in the removal of several projects, including MMOs like New World: Aeternumwhich will no longer receive new content updates, and could potentially shut down the servers by the end of 2026.

“While we are proud of our successes in developing and publishing first-party AAA games, we have made the difficult decision to halt a significant portion of our first-party AAA game development work – particularly around MMOs – within Amazon Game Studios, including significantly reducing the role of our Irvine and San Diego studios, as well as our core publishing team,” read a note from Steve Boom, VP of Audio, Twitch and Gaming.

With MMO development affected by these cuts, it also leaves the status of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO up in the air.

The project was originally announced in 2023 in partnership with Embracer Group, which owns the rights to anything related to The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings.

Neither Amazon nor Embracer have commented on the status of the project since these cuts were announced.

What is Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO about?

When first announced in May 2023, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO was described as taking place in a “persistent world” rendition of Middle-earth and featured “the beloved stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.”

However, no further details were shared beyond that. It is unclear how the game fits in with the rest of the series and whether it would fit into the narrative of the books or films.

Amazon Games Orange County, which also developed New Worldwas announced as the lead in developing the MMO, and that it would be coming to both PC and consoles.

“We are committed to bringing high-quality games to players, whether through original licenses or beloved games like Lord of the Rings,” said Christoph Hartmann, vice president of Amazon Games, at the time of the announcement.

“Bringing players a new version of The Lord of the Rings has long been an aspiration of our team, and we are honored and grateful that Middle-earth Enterprises is entrusting us with this iconic world. »