Amazon Reportedly Canceled Its ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Online RPG

Amazon may be spending a small fortune on a single season of a Lord of the Rings TV show for it streaming platform, but a video game from the same company is reportedly no longer in the cards.

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that the gigantic multiplayer online game based on the written world of J.R.R. Tolken was canceled just two years after it was announced. Bloomberg’s ace gaming reporter Jason Schreier detailed the news of the discarded RPG, which largely seems to be a rights issue with Tencent after the conglomerate bought the company Amazon had partnered with to develop the game.

The game had been in development at Amazon Game Studios alongside the China-based Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd., which was purchased by conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd. in December. The resulting contract negotiations led to a dispute between Amazon and Tencent that eventually caused the game’s cancellation, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that after Tencent’s acquisition of Leyou, “we have been unable to secure terms to proceed with this title at this time.”

The ill-fated RPG will see its support staff shuttled to other projects, but it’s the latest gaming failure Amazon has dealt with in recent months, as a number of titles from the company have fallen through or simply not met expectations since the company’s gaming division launched in 2014. Titles like Breakaway and Crucible have been canceled outright, while another title, New World, has seen a number of delays and still has yet to make it into the public eye. The Lord of the Rings title was expected to be part of the company’s massive push for Tolken-based properties, starting with the forthcoming first season of a TV show that cost a reported $465 million USD.

“We love the Lord of the Rings IP, and are disappointed that we won’t be bringing this game to customers,” the spokesperson for the Seattle-based company said in a statement according to Bloomberg.

[via Bloomberg]