Amazon’s LORD OF THE RING MMORPG Reportedly Cancelled After Massive Layoffs

For fans dreaming of returning to Middle-earth in a new, next-gen adventure, the news isn’t good. Amazon’s ambitious Lord of the Rings MMORPG, which had been in development since early 2023, has reportedly been cancelled.

The project was meant to bring players back into Tolkien’s world with a fresh, modern spin, but development apparently stopped in October 2025.

The report comes from Bloomberg, which revealed that Amazon began cutting roughly 14,000 jobs across the company in late October. Among those affected were many employees from Amazon Games, the publisher behind the long-awaited Lord of the Rings MMO.

The cuts hit multiple divisions, but one key detail came from Ashleigh Amrine, a former Senior Gameplay Engineer, who confirmed on LinkedIn that she was among those laid off—and that the Middle-earth project was shelved.

Amrine shared a bittersweet note: “Y’all would have loved it.”

Amazon Games has been around since 2012, focusing primarily on publishing original titles. That focus seems to be shifting. In a memo released on October 28, 2025, the company cited “significant role reductions” at Amazon Games and outlined plans to concentrate more on its cloud gaming platform, Luna.

The service primarily hosts existing titles, meaning fewer in-house game developments like the cancelled Lord of the Rings MMORPG.

Despite the major shakeup, Amazon Games will continue work on March of Giants, a new Tomb Raider title, and other “casual and AI-focused games.” Still, losing such a massive and promising project sucks, not just for Amazon’s team, but for fans of Tolkien’s world who’ve been waiting for a new multiplayer experience since The Lord of the Rings Online launched back in 2007.

That game, published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, remains beloved but very dated by today’s standards. The cancelled MMO could have been the perfect way to bring players back to a living, breathing Middle-earth with updated visuals, gameplay, and storytelling inspired by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings novels.

The cancellation is a lost opportunity for synergy. With Amazon already heavily invested in Tolkien’s universe through The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the MMORPG could have expanded on that world, offering fans a chance to explore events from before the Third Age—when Sauron’s power still loomed large and the One Ring had yet to be destroyed in Mount Doom.

Unfortunately, that vision won’t be realized anytime soon. While there are still plenty of older Lord of the Rings games to revisit, it may be a long wait before another studio takes up the challenge of creating a new MMORPG set in Middle-earth.

For now, it’s a somber end to what could have been a truly epic return to one of fantasy’s most iconic worlds.