The Lord of the Rings MMO in construction at Amazon has been cancelled, however there is nonetheless a Tolkien-based one thing at the means, Eurogamer stories. The destiny of the Lord of the Rings MMO has been unsure since October 2025, when Amazon laid off a good portion of its Video games department, shuttered its four-year-old MMO, New International: Aeternum, and reduce long ago on main sport investments.
Amazon passively showed the cancellation of the Lord of the Rings MMO to Eurogamer, which requested for a remark after listening to from studio insiders this 12 months that it was once formally shelved. Amazon’s gaming lead Jeff Grattis mentioned, “Our ingenious staff continues to discover a compelling new sport revel in that does justice to Tolkien’s global; we’re operating carefully with Heart-earth and stay enthusiastic about the IP.” That is as just about a “yeah, that massive ol’ MMO is lifeless” because it comes, in advertising and marketing talk.
The New International staff, Amazon Video games Orange County, began publicly operating at the Lord of the Rings MMO in 2023. When the layoffs rolled via two years later, Amazon mentioned in a workforce memo that it was once taking flight make stronger for big-budget titles and particularly MMOs, however the corporate did not publicly identify names. Round that point, a former senior gameplay engineer it seems that posted after which deleted a LinkedIn message alluding to the dying of the Lord of the Rings MMO (whilst breaking our hearts much more): “This morning I used to be a part of the layoffs at Amazon Video games along my extremely proficient friends on New International and our fledgling Lord of the Rings sport (y’all would have cherished it).”
Claims of the cancellation emerged this week as a part of a bigger Eurogamer investigation into Amazon’s generative-AI mandates and next layoffs.
Amazon nonetheless has rights to make video video games in accordance with The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit below its 2023 take care of Embracer Staff, and additionally it is generating the Rings of Energy tv display in accordance with JRR Tolkien’s works. Amazon lately introduced it was once shutting down Glowmade’s dungeon crawler King of Meat simply six months after release, and it is recently eager about simplifying Luna, its game-streaming carrier, in an overt bid to make Top subscriptions extra horny.
Let’s hope the equation of (has LotR license) + (wishes Luna content material) + (is OK with AI in ingenious settings) does not result in one thing dreadful right here.
