Amazon Kills Its Lord of the Rings MMO

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO which was announced two years ago has reportedly been canceled due to failed communication efforts between two megacorporations. Amazon is an extremely wealthy and successful company in many aspects, but its gaming-related projects have all failed, except the New World MMO that is still coming despite many delays.

The third canceled video game from Amazon Game Studios

This seems to be a recurring issue. Amazon Game Studios titles canceled two titles before, those being Breakaway and Crucible. The sad part is, Crucible had a lot of potential, and we found it to be a fun semi-MOBA that needed more polish. Unfortunately, the game went from full release to closed beta, which turned into a death sentence.

The devs kept the Lord of the Rings MMO as obscure as they could. Amazon Game Studios and Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd. worked on the game together while keeping information to a bare minimum. Excited gamers just got tidbits of info, like the game being free2play. Most took that as good news, waiting for the devs to just drop a trailer when the game’s ready to be shown. Everyone fears hyping up their game too early thanks to Cyberpunk’s disastrous launch.

A conflict of interest spelled out the death of the Lord of the Rings MMO

There’s always a problem when two megacorporations butt heads. Amazon already hates when someone interferes with their plans, but Tencent likes to have a say in everything. What does Tencent have to do with anything you may ask? Well, they’ve bought Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd., one of the two teams working on the game, in December. So they have a say in the development process of the Lord of the Rings MMO as much as Amazon does.

The chances of Amazon and Tencent finding a middle ground is next to impossible. That’s exactly what killed the Lord of the Rings MMO, according to a Bloomberg article. It’s a shame, considering we don’t see much exploration of Tolkien’s incredibly compelling world and characters. At least we’re getting the Lord of the Rings: Gollum game, although it was also delayed to 2022.