Amazon confirms ongoing development of Lord of the Rings games despite MMO cancellation.

Will Amazon ever deliver the much-anticipated Lord of the Rings video game? According to Amazon Games GM Jeff Gattis, the company is still searching for the ideal concept to satisfy fans.

Amazon’s gaming division has been a whirlwind of activity, constantly evolving and experimenting across various fronts, from Twitch to MMOs and cloud gaming. In a recent discussion, Gattis acknowledged that there’s still significant work ahead to refine the studio’s focus and unify its diverse gaming strategies, which encompass Amazon Game Studios, the Luna platform, and the Kids Plus model that channels mobile games to Fire devices. His hope is that a few standout titles could help carve out a distinct identity for Amazon in the gaming landscape.

“I would argue there’s not been a lot of innovation in the game space in the last decade or so,” he stated. “Ironically, PUBG might have been it. But I think there are opportunities to create new types of games, and that’s a lot of what we’ve been trying to focus on—new game mechanics.”

This is where the Lord of the Rings comes into play, albeit with some uncertainty. Gattis mentioned that Amazon’s rights to Tolkien’s Middle-earth are “still part of our portfolio investigation,” with no specific projects currently in development. However, that doesn’t imply that progress isn’t being made.

Tales of the Shire is just the latest in a series of setbacks.

Gattis’ remarks follow reports that Amazon’s plans for a Lord of the Rings MMO quietly fell apart after the company’s layoffs in 2025. Initially announced in 2023 through a partnership with Embracer-owned Middle-earth Enterprises, a report suggested that the project lingered in an unusually early development phase for years before finally entering pre-production just before Amazon’s restructuring in October.

While Amazon has not officially canceled the game, sources indicated that developers were being reassigned from New World to the Lord of the Rings team as the project gained momentum, only for the layoffs and Amazon’s retreat from large-scale MMO development to disrupt those plans. This leaves Amazon’s Middle-earth ambitions largely focused on Prime Video, where a third season of The Rings of Power is slated for late 2026, with a fourth season already in the works.

Despite having a steady stream of titles in the pipeline, including the next Tomb Raider games, there’s still an internal team working on both MMOs like New World, which is set to be sunset in January 2027, and other unannounced projects. It seems the team is also considering the possibility of developing a James Bond game following 007 First Light. When I pressed Gattis about whether creatives are actively exploring LOTR concepts at Amazon, he simply affirmed, “that’s right,” while maintaining the company line. It’s still too early to announce anything concrete.

“I looked at a prototype that was pretty interesting just a couple of weeks ago,” he shared. “We’re evaluating different concepts, but unfortunately, I don’t have a definitive ‘This is what we’re going to do’ to share with you today.”

Whenever Amazon finally gets around to its own Lord of the Rings game, it will face some stiff competition: In May, Warhorse Studios, known for the acclaimed Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, announced they are developing an open-world game set in Middle-earth.