By Stephany Nunneley
April 17, 2021 8:33 PM GMT
Amazon has canceled its Lord of the Rings game due to a dispute with the Chinese company Tencent.
According to a Bloomberg report, the online RPG based on Lord of the Rings is no longer in development.
The game had been in development with Amazon Game Studios with Chinese company Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd. since 2019. The latter was finally acquired by Tencent last December.
New Line Cinema
As contract negotiations ended between Amazon and Tencent, the game was canceled, according to people familiar with the matter.
An Amazon spokesman confirmed to Bloomberg that after purchasing Leyou, it could not “provide conditions to continue with this title” at this time.
“We love the Lord of the Rings IP and we are disappointed that we will not bring this game to customers,” said the spokesman (thank you, reseter).
The Amazon team working on the game will be moved to other projects.
Amazon Game Studios has announced the free-to-play MMO based on The Lord of the Rings in July 2019.
The Amazon Game Studios (AGS) team working with Leyou and Athlon Games included veteran developers who worked on EverQuest, Destiny, Planetside, World of Warcraft, Defiance, Rift and other MMOs.
The co-developed title was to be released for PC and consoles and was not related to the Amazon Original TV series, based on The Lord of the Rings, which will debut at some point through Amazon Prime.
The content of the game was never shared, but was to be based on the world described in the trilogy.