Amazon's second attempt at making one MMO to rule them all
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Stop us if you've heard this one before: Amazon is making an MMO based on The Lord of the Rings.
If that sounds familiar, it's because the company already announced this in 2019, working in partnership with China-based developer Leyou Technologies. Two years later, it was announced the project had been cancelled – largely due to Leyou being purchased by Tencent in 2020.
"It was not 100% clear if [the rights] went over to Tencent or not," Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann explains to GamesIndustry.biz. "Tencent and us talked. We know people there, I have a lot of respect for them, but it's probably better we don't work together because we're two large companies. I mean, that's a ten-year project. Who knows what's going to happen? It was better to stay friends."
He added that Tencent was not overly enthused about the project either, in part due to the restrictions of the licence.
"It was not like 'Do whatever you want, just stick to the books and the rest is just a great game'," Hartmann says. "I don't want to go into details but there were certain limitations so it would not have been straightforward."
Middle-earth Enterprises, the company that controls the rights to JRR Tolkien's works, then told Amazon that the licence had reverted to its care. New discussions began but the two firms "just couldn't find an agreement" – again, partly around the "fairly restricted licence."
Last summer, Middle-Earth Enterprises was acquired by Embracer Group, a company with which Amazon already has a strong relationship having announced last year that the two were working together on the next Tomb Raider.
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