Amazon's The Lord of the Rings MMO Canceled
The Lord of the Rings MMO, announced two years ago and developed by Amazon and Leyou Technologies, has been canceled. The problem turned out to be the acquisition of the latter company by Tencent.
- The Lord of the Rings MMO has been scrapped;
- The joint project between Amazon and Leyou ran into contract issues after the latter company was acquired by Tencent.
Announced in 2019, The Lord of the Rings MMO from Athlon Games and Amazon has been canceled. Information about the cancelation of the project was provided by Jason Schreier in his article posted on Bloomberg.
According to the author, problems began when Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd. was acquired by Tencent. Amazon cooperated on the game with the Chinese company, so after it was bought out, new talks were needed on the contract binding the two companies. Unfortunately for us, those talks dragged on and eventually, if Schreier is to be believed, were broken off, resulting in the cancelation of The Lord of the Rings MMO.
Information about the cancelation was later confirmed by Amazon's representative, who also informed that the developers working on the title will be moved to other projects within the company. One of them is New World, a game combining the MMO genre and survival elements, which faces turbulent development and has already been delayed several times.
Amazon, despite huge financial resources and ownership of Twitch, is unable to successfully enter the gaming market. Previous attempts either turned out bad (the poorly reviewed The Grand Tour Game) or were quickly canceled (Breakaway and Crucible). The Lord of the Rings MMO was supposed to be a project that would break the bad streak. Despite the setbacks, Amazon does not intend to give up on this segment and has announced further investments. Perhaps it will be better for them to publish games of other developers. The first of these projects will be a hack 'n' slash with MMO elements - Lost Ark, the release of which should be expected within the next few months in the West.
