While Amazon Games had announced a major departure from releasing video games over the last year, and even reportedly cancelled an in-development MMORPG based on The Lord of the Rings, the company is still seemingly looking at ways to turn the fantasy IP into a “new game experience”.
In a statement to Eurogamer, Amazon’s head of games, Jeff Grattis, said that the company is exploring new game experiences that can adapt the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. “Our creative team continues to explore a compelling new game experience that does justice to Tolkien’s world; we are working closely with Middle-earth and remain excited about the IP,” he said in his statement.
Amazon Games had announced major cutbacks to many of its teams, which also included the end-of-life announcement for MMORPG New World. This was part of the company laying off more than 14,000 of its employees from various divisions, and had stopped further development on New World: Aeternum.
“As New World recognizes its fourth anniversary since launching on PC, we reflect on an incredible journey shaped by our dedicated player community,” wrote Amazon Game Studios in its announcement. “Your feedback and passion have been instrumental in evolving Aeternum into the world it is today, and our team is deeply grateful for this shared adventure. After four years of steady content updates and a major new console release, we’ve reached a point where it is no longer sustainable to continue supporting the game with new content updates.”
In February, the company had also announced that it would no longer publish narrative-led driving game being developed by Maverick Games. A spokesperson for the company said that this was part of Amazon’s larger push to focus on the relaunch of Luna. Despite this, however, Amazon Games is seemingly still the publisher for the two upcoming Tomb Raider games—Legacy of Atlantis and Catalyst.
“As part of our strategic evolution to focus on projects that leverage Amazon’s unique strengths and scale, including the recent re-launch of Luna and our Tomb Raider franchise partnership with Crystal Dynamics, we have decided to release Maverick Games from their publishing agreement with Amazon Game Studios,” said the spokesperson.
“We have tremendous respect for the Maverick Games team and the compelling narrative-led driving experience they’re creating. This decision allows Maverick Games the flexibility to find a publishing partner whose strategic priorities are better aligned with bringing their game to market. We’re proud of what we accomplished together during our partnership and wish them every success in the future.”
As for The Lord of the Rings, the fact that the MMORPG project may have been cancelled wasn’t officially confirmed by Amazon Games. Rather, the news came courtesy of former senior gameplay engineer Ashleigh Amrine taking to her LinkedIn account to announce layoffs.
“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),” wrote Amrine in the since-deleted post.
In the meantime, there have also been rumors of another major project based on The Lord of the Rings being in the works.