Amazon Game Studios has one Lord of the Rings online role play, Bloomberg reported. The company announced the project with Leyou-owned Athlon Games in 2019, planning it as a free-to-play game for PC and consoles.
The game was to be played “in a time long before the events of Under the spell of the Ring, exploring lands, people and creatures never seen before by fans of the Tolkien universe, ”said a then announcement from Athlon. But Leyou was acquired by Tencent Holdings in December and the contract negotiations between Amazon and Tencent later diverged, Bloomberg reported.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday, but a spokesperson said that Bloomberg that it “was unable to obtain conditions to continue” with the game. “We love the Lord of the Rings IP and are disappointed that we will not be bringing this game to customers,” said the spokesperson.
Since its launch in 2014, Amazon Game Studios has not yet released a successful video game, with some previously announced games canceled and others delayed. The video game adaptation of The Grand Tour got such bad reviews in 2019 that the game was pulled from stores. In January, Bloomberg reported that the game studio had internal issues, including a culture that did not provide equal opportunities for men and women, and an internal game engine that was “ painfully slow. ”
But Amazon’s new CEO Andy Jassy said in response that he is committed to the video games division, which was launched under outgoing CEO and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who will step down as CEO later this year. “I think this team will get there if we stay focused on what matters most,” said Jassy.