Amazon Games has canceled its MMO game based on the Lord of the Rings universe. As reported by Bloomberg, the cancellation is apparently a result of a contractual dispute between Amazon and Tencent.
An Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg: “We have been unable to secure terms to proceed with this title at this time. The Amazon team working on the game will be moved to other projects. “We love the Lord of the Rings IP, and are disappointed that we won’t be bringing this game to customers.”
The Lord of the Rings MMO was being developed at Amazon Game Studios alongside Leyou Technologies Holdings, which was recently acquired by Tencent Holdings in December 2020. The game was announced back in 2018 as a AAA free-to-play MMO by Leyou Technologies, the studio teased that they were working with a “mystery partner” which turned out to be Amazon Game Studios. The project was in development for PC and consoles.
Amazon Game Studios recently shut down Crucible just five months after the game’s soft launch.
“In July we moved Crucible into closed beta. We made a list of features we felt would enhance the player experience, which we shared publicly on our roadmap, and with the exception of custom games (which we expect to ship in the coming days), we completed them all. With those features shipped, our next step was to evaluate the feedback we’ve heard from you, paired with the data we’ve collected, to determine our path forward.”
“That evaluation led us to a difficult decision: we’ll be discontinuing development on Crucible. We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible.”
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