Bloomberg said these negotiations led to a dispute that ultimately resulted in the game's cancellation.Īn Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg that after Tencent's acquisition of Leyou, "we have been unable to secure terms to proceed with this title at this time." In December, Tencent bought Leyou, which forged contract negotiations over the Lord of the Rings MMO. Given how long it can take to develop an MMO, I wouldn’t be surprised if the show sees the light of day first.In July 2019, Amazon's game development arm, Amazon Game Studios, revealed it was co-developing a new free-to-play MMO based on JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.Īmazon was working with LA-based developer Athlon Games - a subsidiary of Chinese publisher Leyou Technologies, owner of Warframe developer Digital Extremes and Splash Damage. Supposedly the game and the Lord of the Rings TV show Amazon‘s also working on will have no connection to each other, despite being developed at roughly the same time. (Anyone remember Guardians of Middle-earth?) Around a decade-and-a-half ago, a whole slew of Tolkien games sprang up after the release of the films - many quite excellent, though some have since disappeared. There aren’t very many fantasy franchises with that level of name-recognition, and the recent success of Shadow of Mordor has proven there’s definitely a market for LotR-branded games. It’s not a huge surprise Amazon is looking to squeeze as much as it can out of the Tolkien license. Leyou’s publishing branch, Athlon Games, is run by Dave Miller, who worked with Warner Bros on another Tolkien-branded game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. When the game was first revealed last September, a spokesperson for Middle-Earth Enterprises (which owns the name rights to Tolkien’s works) said it would be about “exploring epic regions in Middle-earth during the years leading to the events of The Lord of the Rings.”Īccording to a spokesperson, the game is being developed in collaboration with Leyou, the Chinese company that owns Warframe developer Digital Extremes and which, oddly, used to be a poultry firm. Still, the in-game lore spans several thousands of years, so if Amazon wants to differentiate its game from the previous offering, it could always set it during a different time period. This wouldn’t be the first MMO set in Tolkien’s universe, or even the only one - Lord of the Rings Online is, as far as I know, still around.
But now we know Amazon‘s throwing its resources into the game, we can hope it’ll see a huge boost in quality and size it might not otherwise have had.
We already knew the game was in development - details first surfaced last year, though it’s been relatively quiet on that front since and the game‘s likely still in the early stages of development.
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