Amazon has officially cancelled its Lord of the Rings MMO, ending years of speculation about the project's fate. The game was being developed by Amazon Games Orange County, the studio behind New World: Aeternum, which started working on the Tolkien project publicly in 2023.

The cancellation comes after Amazon's October 2025 layoffs gutted its Games division, shuttered New World: Aeternum, and prompted the company to withdraw from big-budget titles and MMOs. A former senior gameplay engineer reportedly alluded to the project's death in a LinkedIn post before deleting it. Amazon still holds rights to make Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit games under its 2023 deal with Embracer Group, and it's producing The Rings of Power television show. The company recently shut down Glowmade's King of Meat just six months after launch and is now focused on simplifying its Luna streaming service to make Prime subscriptions more attractive.