What you need to know
- Amazon Game Studios is developing a Lord of the Rings MMO title in partnership with Leyou.
- The game is planned for PC and consoles and is not connected to the upcoming Amazon show.
- This MMO will take place long before everything in The Lord of the Rings.
Last fall, Athlon Games (a publishing division of Leyou) announced that they were developing a Lord of the Rings title with a partner, who was unknown at the time. Today, we've learned that Amazon Game Studios is developing a Lord of the Rings MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) in partnership with Athlon Games and are the partner that was previously unknown.
The game is currently planned to release as a free-to-play title on both PC and consoles, though there's no release date or window currently known. However, the game will not be related to the upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show being developed by Amazon. Instead, according to the press release from last fall, this game is set "...at a time long before the events of The Lord of the Rings, exploring lands, people and creatures never seen before by fans of the Tolkien universe."
There's plenty of MMO experience on both sides of this partnership, as Leyou owns Digital Extremes which are the developers of the hugely successful Warframe. Along with that, Amazon Game Studios is currently developing an MMO called New World.
Amazon Game Studios currently consists of three studios: Amazon Game Studios Seattle, Amazon Game Studios San Diego, and Amazon Game Studios Orange County (Double Helix, which was renamed after being acquired by Amazon). During E3 2019, Kotaku reported that dozens of employees at Amazon Game Studios had been laid off and that multiple projects yet to be announced had been canceled.
