Yes, you heard that right – Amazon has reportedly cancelled its long-delayed Lord of the Rings MMO, for the third time now, mind you. The project, which has seen several restarts in recent years, and has been quietly shelved yet again, according to new reports from sources close to the company itself. So after years of an apparently mismanaged development cycle, numerous issues in regards to licensing (it is LOTR after all), it seems the fever dream of a huge Middle-Earth MOO isn’t happening after all.
If you’ve followed this development hell at all, this might feel like a déjà vu, since Amazon first announced the MMORPG in 2019. The game was supposed to be a collaboration between Amazon Game Studios and Leyou Technologies, which would’ve been set long before The Lord of The Rings and even The Hobbit. What happened is history, since rarely we hear about a Tencent acquisition without it going tits up. The project fell into licensing chaos after the acquisition in 2020, and was then cancelled in 2021.
In 2023, however, Amazon decided to revive the game again, this time having only their internal studios work on it. They promised a next-gen open-world experience, set in Middle-Earth – what an experience that would be, considering the actual Lord of the Rings Online MMO is quite ancient by this point. Now, though? Well, the game has been cancelled once more, and we’re not sure our hearts could take another glimmer of hope, with Amazon reigniting development yet again.
The Final Death for Amazon’s Middle-Earth MMO
The source is – as it is so often – Rock Paper Shotgun and numerous other industry insiders, and the cancellation came out of the blue after months of silence from Amazon. Despite being in active production under Amazon Games Orange County (the same studio that made New World, by the way), the project reportedly faced many setbacks, particularly around creative direction and the aforementioned licensing.
As you might’ve expected, the MMO was meant to serve as a companion piece to Amazon’s Rings of Power TV series (we all know how that turned out), expanding the company’s claim on Tolkien’s universe across many forms of media. These sources suggest, that conflicts over the visual design choices of Middle-Earth and the canonical timeline between the show and the game caused the delays as well.
That doesn’t surprise us at all, since the TV show already played fast and loose with the source material, and that’s us being nice. Suffice to say, the project could never quite figure out what it wanted to be visually and canonically. Adding to the chaos was arguably the shifting focus of Amazon in regards to games, since New World’s mixed long-term success and the less than warm reception of later updates made a streamlined approach to a new project more difficult, we’d imagine.
Will There Be A Lord of the Rings MMO At All?
Now, as much as the news of the project being axed sounds gloomy, the cancellation itself doesn’t mean Tolkien’s world will vanish from gaming entirely. Embracer Group, the rights holder to The Lord of the Rings IP, has been licensing it out aggressively, as we all know, and most recently that honor befell Free Range Games for The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria and to Wētā Workshop for an upcoming untitled project, which we admittedly don’t know a lot about yet.
But Amazon’s exit from the MMO space leaves a noticeable gap. If even one of the world’s richest companies can’t make Middle-Earth work as an online world, what hope is there for smaller studios, especially since the Gollum debacle? We don’t have a straight answer for that, in theory, this IP should give any developer the ability to print money, if you ask us.
Still, if the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that The Lord of the Rings is as immortal as the elves who inhabit it, so maybe there’s a chance yet. Fans will keep hoping, developers will keep pitching, and one day, someone might actually build a Middle-earth that lives up to the dream. Until then, Amazon’s version will remain what it’s always been – another ghost wandering the halls of cancelled projects, whispering “you shall not pass” to anyone who dares try again.
