Amazon has significantly downscaled its video game efforts in the midst of nearly 14,000 layoffs at the company at large. Amidst those changes, the company has reportedly canceled its second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMORPG. Easily one of Amazon Game’s biggest projects to date, it’s a blow for both the MMO scene and fans who’ve had a paltry selection of video games in recent years based on one of the biggest franchises in the world.
While we don’t have official confirmation from Amazon itself, as Rock Paper Shotgun noticed, an engineer named Ashleigh Amrine posted an update on their LinkedIn. While the post is gone now, it said, “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).”
