Lord of the Rings MMO canceled in aftermath of Amazon layoffs, former dev suggests
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Key points
- Former Amazon developer suggests that the Lord of the Rings MMO was canceled following recent massive layoffs.
- Amazon’s initial LOTR MMO, which announced in 2019 vanished in 2021 without ever seeing the light of day.
- The LOTR MMO in question was revealed by Amazon in 2023, along with its partnership with Middle-earth IP rights owner Embracer Group.
A former senior gameplay engineer at Amazon Games suggests that the Lord of the Rings MMO was canceled following recent massive layoffs at Amazon, which included gutting the company’s video game division.
According to the report from RockPaperShotgun dated Oct. 30, 2025, Ashleigh Amrine announced that she had lost her job at Amazon via a LinkedIn post on Oct. 29, 2025, mentioning the Lord of the Rings game: “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’s post is not avaliable at the time of writing, so the direct speech is conveyed through RockPaperShotgun’s report.
The LOTR MMO in question was revealed by Amazon in 2023, along with its partnership with Middle-earth IP rights owner Embracer Group, who acquired rights a year earlier.
Amazon’s initial LOTR MMO, which was being developed in collaboration with the Chinese company Leyou, was announced in 2019 and then vanished in 2021 without ever seeing the light of day due to an apparent contractual dispute after Tencent acquired Leyou.
Besides games, Amazon is currently working on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series, which has a 6.9 out of 10 rating based on about 433,000 reviews.
The news comes on heels of reports that Amazon is about to execute “significant role reductions” in its video-game division as part of the sweeping 14,000 layoffs.
