Amazon Still Has a Lord of the Rings Game in the Works, but the MMO Dream Appears to Be Over
Amazon’s original plan to build a major Lord of the Rings MMO appears to be finished, but the company is clearly not done with Middle earth. A new Eurogamer report, published as part of a wider story about canceled internal projects and AI experimentation inside Amazon Games, indicates that the previously announced MMO has effectively been shelved. At the same time, Amazon Games leadership says the company is still exploring a different Lord of the Rings project that it believes can properly honor Tolkien’s world.
That distinction is important. Back in May 2023, Amazon Games and Embracer’s Middle earth Enterprises officially announced a new open world MMO adventure set in Tolkien’s universe, with Amazon Games Orange County leading development for PC and consoles. At the time, Amazon positioned the project as a major long term multiplayer play inside one of fantasy’s most valuable IPs. Now, that specific vision appears to have been abandoned as Amazon continues reshaping its gaming business.
What keeps the story interesting is Amazon’s response. In a statement provided to Eurogamer and repeated by Game Developer, Amazon Games general manager Jeffrey Gattis said, “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.” That wording does not sound like a company walking away from the license. It sounds like a company that has killed one direction and is now trying to find a better one.
For fans, the most immediate takeaway is that whatever Amazon has in mind next is apparently not an MMO. That alone says a lot about where the company is today. Over the past year, Amazon has been cutting back first party AAA development, especially around MMO ambitions, and the Lord of the Rings project appears to have been caught in that broader strategic pullback. In that context, a more focused single player or smaller scale multiplayer game would make far more sense than another massive persistent world bet.
There is also a brand angle here that Amazon likely understands very well. Tolkien’s universe remains one of the few fantasy settings big enough to support multiple game styles at once, and an MMO was never the only viable path. If Amazon truly wants to make something that “does justice to Tolkien’s world,” the opportunity now may be in building a more curated experience rather than forcing Middle earth into a live service structure that no longer fits the company’s current direction. That is not confirmation of genre or scope, but it is the most logical reading of Amazon’s current language.
For now, that leaves the situation in a transitional phase. The 2023 MMO announcement now looks like a dead branch, but Amazon is still publicly committed to the Lord of the Rings license and still speaking as if a new game is in active creative exploration. Until the company shows what that project actually is, Middle earth fans are left with a familiar kind of hope: the old plan may be gone, but something new is still alive behind the scenes.
Would you rather see Amazon tackle Lord of the Rings as a big story driven action RPG, or do you still think Middle earth deserves another serious MMO attempt?
