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Nearly three years after Amazon announced that it would be co-developing a free-to-play massively multiplayer online game based off of the Lord of the Rings franchise, it appears that this iteration of Middle-earth won't be seeing the light of day. In an article from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, an Amazon spokesperson has confirmed that the game will not be continuing development, as the result of the purchase of co-developer Leyou Technology Holdings Ltd., by Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd. in December of last year.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that after Tencent’s acquisition of Leyou, “we have been unable to secure terms to proceed with this title at this time.”

The Amazon team working on the game will be moved to other projects. “We love the Lord of the Rings IP, and are disappointed that we won’t be bringing this game to customers,” the spokesperson for the Seattle-based company said in a statement.

Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO was announced in July of 2019, and was intended to be a free-to-play MMO available for both PC and consoles. No intended release date was ever announced for the game.

Source: Bloomberg

 

[Chary]

Amazon can't make a game to save its life

 

[Xzi]

So is Amazon just gonna give up trying to make games already? This is what, three failures in a row?

 

[Silent_Gunner]

A very precious quote for this situation would be that one does not simply decide to make a video game if it shall not pass quality thresholds!

 

[Rahkeesh]

This is more like their devs were stolen from them than the other two cases where they pushed bad games out to die. But don't worry, there's still Lost World to fail yet.

 

[The Catboy]

I didn't even know they were making a LOR MMO until right now. Maybe I read about it and said, "Oh, another big non-gaming company is trying to make a game, that's going to get canceled," then straight up forgot. That's pretty much how I treat all situations like this.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Gaming industry is easier on paper than on real life. Big corporations are learning that the hard way.


On side note, tencent will be an unstoppable force soon. Usually their business practices are awful, so that's bad news

 

[Deleted member 546149]

Proof Amazon shouldn't touch the game market

 

[tech3475]

I wonder if Netflix will make a film about the mess that is Amazon games?

 

[eyeliner]

What's preventing them to move forward with another developer?
I think this is a very convenient excuse.

 

[smallissue]

I didn't even know they were making a LOR MMO until right now. Maybe I read about it and said, "Oh, another big non-gaming company is trying to make a game, that's going to get canceled," then straight up forgot. That's pretty much how I treat all situations like this.

i didn't even know it exsisted

 

[DKB]

It'll take about another 10 failures for them to go: "Yeah, let's stop." Dumbasses.

 

[JRave]

It is interesting that people are saying it is canceled.. Amazon wasn't the company that got the license, Leyou was. Even the quote listed states they are disappointed that they won't be bringing the game to customers. Tencent/Leyou can still continue to make a/the game based on Lord of the Rings.

 

[Xzi]

It is interesting that people are saying it is canceled.. Amazon wasn't the company that got the license, Leyou was. Even the quote listed states they are disappointed that they won't be bringing the game to customers. Tencent/Leyou can still continue to make a/the game based on Lord of the Rings.

AFAIK Amazon owns the rights to LOTR media spinoffs currently, and I'm betting they'd charge a prohibitively high price to license out the IP. Until we get a story claiming otherwise, the game is effectively dead.

 

[Deleted member 534570]

Damn. I was looking forward to this.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Whatever was left of the Seattle based Crucible studio was also working on the project to some degree (which is why Leyou is a "co-developer." Even if it was like 90% them or something.)

 

[DiJornios]

Still better than ballons wonderwhirl

 

[Deleted User]

To be fair, it makes sense; if the Orcs formed a Union, there wouldn't be a feasible War Machine premise to begin with ...

 

[tabzer]

What's preventing them to move forward with another developer?
I think this is a very convenient excuse.

Maybe Leyou was doing all the work and Amazon was just throwing money at it.

 

[pustal]

Amazon can't make a game to save its life

The game died of a serious UTI complication after refusing to pee in bottles for several days. Experts did try to save it but Amazon discovered that the game wanted to unionize and pulled the plug.