Not long after Amazon confirmed a massive 14,000 jobs being cut, the company has reportedly canceled their Lord of the Rings MMORPG.

The long-delayed Lord of the Rings MMORPG was reportedly canceled after the company officially shut down development for their other MMO, New World.

While the New World MMO has officially been effectively shut down, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO getting axed was confirmed by a now-former staffer.

The other MMO getting canceled was noted by Amazon Games engineer Ashleigh Amrine in a now-deleted Linkedin post.

“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),” Amrine said. “It’s always tough to see such a strong team go through something like this – I’ve been lucky to work with some of the most skilled, creative, and kind developers I’ve ever met here.”

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO was first announced way back in 2019 under Leyou Technology, who later got bought by Tencent – and the first iteration of the MMO getting quietly canceled. 

The company made a second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMO in 2023 after partnering with the latest owner to (most of) the rights of Middle-earth, Embracer Group.

Despite being a major part of Amazon’s focus on the Lord of the Rings IP, not much was known about the game save that it was an “open-world MMO adventure in a persistent world set in Middle-earth” and that it featured stories from both “The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings literary trilogy.”