“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),” a former senior gameplay engineer for Amazon Games said on LinkedIn, according to Rock Paper Shotgun. (For me, when I try to see the post, LinkedIn shows a message that says “this post cannot be displayed.”)
Amazon and Embracer didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. As of this writing, the LOTR game is still listed on the Amazon Games website.
After the layoffs were announced, the developers of New World: Aeternum, an MMO Amazon developed in-house, said they would no longer be providing new content updates for the game, though its servers will stay live through 2026. Amazon will continue to support two MMOs that it publishes, Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark, company spokesperson Brittney Hefner told The Verge this week.
The planned Lord of the Rings game with Embracer, announced in 2023, was Amazon’s second run at an MMO in the LOTR universe; the first MMO was revealed in 2019 before being canceled two years later.
