Another blow for Amazon's games business; the Lord of the Rings project the company was working on has been cancelled.
That's according to Bloomberg, which says that the MMORPG based on the upcoming Prime Video adaptation of Tolkien's epic story has been canned due to contract disputes with Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent.
The Lord of the Rings game was being made in partnership with Leyou Technologies Holdings, a Hong Kong-based firm that was acquired by Tencent in December 2020 for $1.3 billion. The Amazon Game Studios team working on the project are being moved to other titles.
“We love the Lord of the Rings IP, and are disappointed that we won’t be bringing this game to customers,” an Amazon spokesperson said.
This is the latest in a string of bad news surrounding Amazon Game Studios. An exposé in January revealed a company struggling under management that didn't appear to know what it was doing. Upcoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said that he is committed to Amazon's games business following news of his future promotion to replace company founder, Jeff Bezos.
In February of this year, Amazon bumped its MMO New World back once again. The company has opened a brand new studio in Montreal and has hired a number of people from the core Rainbow Six Siege team at Ubisoft.
