It began with the forging of the great game ideas. Three projects were given to the immortal, wisest and fairest of all studios. Seven projects were handed great genre-miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine game projects were gifted to the race of men, who above all else desire power.
For within these rings was bound the strength and the will to govern each video game development period. But they were all of them deceived, for another game was being made. Deep in the land of Amazon game studios, in the Fires of Mount Overtime, the Dark Lord Bezos forged a master game, and into this game he poured all of his cruelty, his malice and his will to kill all efforts for his employees to form a union.
And it looks like that game has been plunged back into the fires from whence it came! Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO, which was announced way back in 2019, is reportedly deader than Boromir after a contract dispute with Chinese giant Tencent and co-developer Leyou Technologies emerged. According to a Bloomberg report, Amazon and Tencent couldn’t reach an agreement, eventually hitting the brakes on the project.
Apparently designed as a free-to-play MMO, the Lord of the Rings game would have arrived on console and PC if it had been completed but has instead become yet another example of Amazon’s rocky venture into the world of gaming. Breakaway and Crucible got hit with the big ol’ cancel button, and the MMO New World has been repeatedly delayed. It’s now scheduled for an August release, but we’ll see.
As for the folks working on the game, it looks like the internal members from the Amazon side have been shifted to other projects. Leyou Technologies is the parent company of Warframe developer Digital Extremes and Gears Tactics studio Splash Damage, plus it owns a stake in Halo support studio Certain Affinity so it’ll probably be fine.
Tencent is still a gargantuan beast with its fingers in many profitable pies, like this little game called League of Legends. Maybe you’ve heard about it. That’s not to say that you won’t expect any Lord of the Rings content in the future, as Amazon still has a TV series with a half-billion-dollar price tag attached to it in development, and there’s a solo video game starring everyone’s favourite ring-chaser on the way.
Last Updated: April 19, 2021
