Copyright Inverse
Amazon has significantly downscaled its video game efforts in the midst of nearly 14,000 layoffs at the company at large. Amidst those changes, the company has reportedly canceled its second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMORPG. Easily one of Amazon Game’s biggest projects to date, it’s a blow for both the MMO scene and fans who’ve had a paltry selection of video games in recent years based on one of the biggest franchises in the world. While we don’t have official confirmation from Amazon itself, as Rock Paper Shotgun noticed, an engineer named Ashleigh Amrine posted an update on their LinkedIn. While the post is gone now, it said, “This morning I was part of the layoffs at Amazon Games, alongside my incredibly talented peers on New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings game (y'all would have loved it).” That certainly implies the project was canned and the team was laid off. And it would genuinely be a huge move if the Lord of the Rings MMO was cancelled, as it’s easily Amazon’s biggest in-development project. Before these layoffs, we knew the Lord of the Rings game was in production, as well as a new untitled Tomb Raider project, another untitled online role-playing game, and an untitled open-world driving game. While we’ll have to wait and see the status of those other projects, cancelling Lord of the Rings could mark a major shift in Amazon’s game strategy. Up until now, the company has heavily invested in the MMO scene, publishing the Korean MMO Lost Ark in the West, and primary publisher for New World and Throne of Liberty. You might have picked up on it, but part of the core problem with Amazon’s approach, as I see it, is that the company has multiple games jockeying for the exact same player bases — almost cannibalizing each other. The MMO scene has undoubtedly shrunk since its heydays in the ‘90s and 2000s, especially as live service games like Fortnite have started soaking up players’ time. That’s coupled with the fact that major players like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV dominate, leaving less and less room for new players to enter the space. And it’s understandable why that would be the case. MMOs are humongous time commitments, oftentimes feeling like amother job where you have to log in and do your dailies, keep up with tasks, or stay consistent to keep your in-game housing. The playerbase that grew up on classic MMOs has gotten older, started families, and has less time to play than ever — while the genre largely hasn’t attracted a younger audience en masse. We’ve seen countless MMOs close their shutters over the years, including five alone in 2022. The catch here is that if there’s any single property that could have an MMO blow up, it’s Lord of the Rings — easily the most widely recognized fantasy franchise in history. In a way, it feels like the entire MMO genre, the idea of living and adventuring in a fantasy world, finds its roots in what Lord of the Rings established. Amazon is also currently producing the TV series Rings of Power, and an MMO would undoubtedly tie in with that. Of course, it bears saying that Lord of the Rings Online, developed by Standing Stone Games, is still going strong 18 years later, and still has an active player base. This also isn’t the first time Amazon has canceled a Lord of the Rings MMO, as back in 2021, it stopped a project being made in collaboration with Leyou, after the company was acquired by Tencent. There’s a real hunger for getting to “live” in the world of The Lord of the Rings, and it’s astounding that any company wouldn’t want to see that kind of project come to fruition. We obviously don’t know the specifics of what’s happened behind the scenes, but Amazon’s investment in AI infrastructure doesn’t instill confidence. A post on Amazon’s website, written by vice president of people experience and technology Beth Galleti, explains the reasoning behind the layoffs. One particular section states, “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.” You can already see that reflected in Amazon’s video games output, considering the company’s latest original release is Courtroom Chaos: Starring Snoop Dogg — an AI-powered Snoop Dogg “court room improv” game. That alone pretty much says all it needs to. At a certain point, you have to question the long-term business acumen of investing in something like AI Snoop Dogg court, and not an MMO made by human developers set in a world people would give anything to simply exist in.
