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Hell freezes over - "Halo" appears on the Playstation 5
by Domagoj Belancic
Amazon cancels its "Lord of the Rings" MMO
31/10/2025
Translation: machine translated
Amazon has apparently finally buried its planned "Lord of the Rings" MMO. This is due to massive restructuring and the next major job cuts at the company.
It should have been epic: an online role-playing game in the «Lord of the Rings» universe, developed by Amazon Games in collaboration with Embracer. But now it's over before the adventure has even really begun.
As The Verge reports, Amazon has cancelled the project as part of the latest wave of layoffs. In an internal letter, the company spoke of discontinuing a «significant amount of work on MMOs» - and this apparently includes the «Lord of the Rings» game. A former senior gameplay engineer wrote on LinkedIn:
«I was part of today's layoffs at Amazon Games - along with my incredibly talented colleagues at New World and our new 'Lord of the Rings' project. You guys would have loved it.»
The post has since been deleted, but several industry portals were able to confirm it.
The end of a long (and bumpy) journey
Amazon is generally scaling back its gaming activities. The in-house MMO «New World» will also no longer receive any new content. The servers will only remain online until 2026. However, «Lost Ark» and «Throne and Liberty», two games that Amazon only supports as a publisher, will be continued.
A group undergoing reorganisation
This is all happening against the backdrop of the next major job cuts at Amazon: Around 14,000 employees are losing their jobs. According to an internal memo, «bureaucracy is to be reduced» and resources «are to be reallocated to the most important bets of the future». Between the lines, this means: more AI, fewer classic games.
Amazon CEO Beth Galetti speaks of a «reorganisation in order to act faster». Group CEO Andy Jassy had already declared in the summer that generative AI was the biggest transformation since the internet. He thus made the company's future priority clear.
A spokeswoman emphasised that AI was «not the main reason» for the redundancies. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Amazon's focus is now elsewhere.
Header image: "Rings of Power" / Amazon MGM Studios
Luca Fontana
Senior Editor
Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.chI write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.
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