Christoph Hartmann, the head of Amazon Games, has revealed the reasons for the studio's decision to cancel the Lord of the Rings MMO, which had been in development for years.
In April, the company announced the cancellation of a project it was working on with Athlon Games. According to a report at the time, the cancellation resulted from a disagreement between Amazon and tech behemoth Tencent, which acquired Leyou, the company that owned the Athlon Games studio.
In an interview with GameSpot, Hartmann revealed that the project was canceled due to Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns the Lord of the Rings rights.
A clause in the contract signed with Amazon Games allowed termination of the agreement if one of its partners got acquired by another company.
After this happened, Hartmann confessed that things became "very complicated," Although Amazon tried to move forward with the project, it eventually fell through.
“The question was, sure, maybe could have worked together with Tencent to do something, but I think we’re too big as companies to turn into partners doing a property together where they own the license and we develop the game,” Hartmann said.
''So we decided it’s better to not work together there. Then we tried to figure something out with both ends, but I think it just dragged on too long.”
This Lord of the Rings MMO was first announced in 2018 by Athlon and Middle-earth Enterprises. At the time, Athlon said it was looking for a publishing partner to create a game that would take place long before the events of Lord of the Rings.
Do you think this would've been a good game? Let us know in the comments!
Comments
Best
New