Lord of the Rings MMO Looks Dead and Buried, Thousands of Jobs Cut

It looks like the upcoming The Lord of the Rings MMO championed by Amazon may be in jeopardy, following reported mass redundancies at the company and its game development departments.

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

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

“While we’re proud of our successes in first-party AAA game development and publishing, we have made the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work – specifically around MMOs – within Amazon Game Studios, including making significant role reductions in our studios in Irvine and San Diego, as well as our central publishing team,” reads a memo from Steve Boom, VP of audio, Twitch, and games.

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

Amazon

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

Neither Amazon nor Embracer have not commented on the project’s status since announcing these cuts.

What is Amazon's The Lord of the Rings MMO about?

When it was first announced in May 2023, Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings MMO was described to be set 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’s unknown how the game ties into the rest of the series, and whether it would accommodate the narrative of the books or the films.

Amazon Games Orange County, which also developed New World, was announced to be leading development on the MMO, and that it would come to both PC and consoles.

“We’re committed to bringing players high-quality games, whether through original IPs or long-beloved ones like The Lord of the Rings,” said Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann at the time of the announcement.

“Bringing players a fresh take on The Lord of the Rings has long been an aspiration for our team, and we’re honored and grateful that Middle-earth Enterprises is entrusting us with this iconic world.”