Amazon Games talks about the canceled Lord of the Rings MMO

The head of Amazon Games has provided a new perspective on why the company’s Lord of the Rings MMO was canceled after several years in development.

The company confirmed last April that the planned free-to-play title for console and PC, which it had been co-developing with Athlon Games, a US subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Leyou Technologies, had been cancelled.

According to a report by the Bloomberg website at the time, the game’s cancellation was the result of a dispute between Amazon and Chinese tech giant Tencent, which Leyou acquired in December 2020.

in a new interview with GameSpot websiteAmazon Games president Christoph Hartmann has revealed that Lord of the Rings licensee Middle-earth Enterprises has chosen to exercise a clause in its contract that allows it to terminate its rights agreement should it acquire one of Your partners.

After this happened, Hartmann said things got “very messy.” And while Amazon explored ways to continue working on the project with Tencent, it ended up walking away after failing to make progress in negotiations.

“The question was, sure, maybe I could have worked together with Tencent to do something, but I think we’re too big companies to really become partners doing a property together where they own the license and we develop the game.”Hartmann said.

“So we decided it’s better not to work together there. Then we tried to find something with both ends, but I think it dragged on too long.”

The canceled Lord of the Rings game was originally announced in 2018 by Athlon and Middle-earth Enterprises.

Athlon said at the time that it was working with a “partner developer” to create an online game set “long before the events of Lord of the Rings, exploring lands, people and creatures never before seen by fans of the Tolkien universe.”

In addition to co-developing the title, Amazon Games set out to market and publish the game globally, except for China, which would have been managed by Leyou.