Amazon might have reportedly killed its second attempt at a The Lord of the Rings MMO, but the publisher says it's still "working closely" with Middle-earth Enterprises on other games set in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy universe.
Eurogamer reports that The Lord of the Rings MMO is no longer in development at Amazon Game Studios and the developer behind New World, citing sources familiar with the project, as part of an investigation into the publisher's use of generative-AI in games. RPS reported as much last year, too, though Amazon never actually commented on the news.
Amazon's head of games Jeff Grattis didn't exactly confirm the game's cancelation in a new statement made to Eurogamer, but he didn't deny it either, which would be easy to do if The Lord of the Rings MMO was actually being worked on, you'd imagine.
Grattis instead draws attention to how the company "continues to explore a compelling new game experience that does justice to Tolkien's world" and is "working closely with Middle-earth and remain excited about the IP."
Amazon's first stab at a Middle-earth MMO was a collaboration with a Tencent subsidiary that fell into the pools of Mordor back in 2021. This latest project was instead a joint effort with Middle-earth's newest owners, Embracer Group, and Amazon's internal game dev team.
More than 1,000 developers at the studio were reportedly being transitioned off of projects like New World, which is being shut down next year, and onto The Lord of the Rings right before Amazon went through company-wide layoffs that hit its gaming division hard - a factor that likely contributed to the MMO's demise.
Making matter worse, Eurogamer's source claims Amazon announced the project almost as soon as it got a hold of the license and before it had given its developers a heads up. The Lord of the Rings MMO also only had "one or two people working on it as a side project" for several years, it's claimed.
As for what that mysterious new LOTR game might be, recent rumors and reports suggested the developer behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance might be leading a new RPG set in Middle-earth since both were swallowed up by the maws of Embracer Group at around the same time.
