Following extensive layoffs that impacted more than 30k employees, and heavily impacted their game division, Amazon announced another game was canceled.
If you haven’t played New World, then you have very little time to do so as it will be closed starting early next year. The bad news? The MMO was actually fairly good, with great sound design and mechanics, along with some in-world events that were really fun. What wasn’t good about it? Amazon marketing.
It seems Amazon doesn’t know what to do with their assortment of gaming studios they’ve acquired over time as games keep getting canceled. One game that was slated to come out within a year or two gave us hope though, and it was a new Lord of the Rings MMO. Taking New World and slapping LOTR on it, with the world and character depth the franchise has, seemed like it’d be enough to warrant a whole experience. But that’s no more.
Rumors circulated that the game was canceled earlier this morning, and after reaching out to the studio by multiple outlets it seems no one is denying it. Instead the team will “focus on a new experience.” The internal team only made the statement that they “are still committed to the LOTR IP,” but won’t confirm or deny the MMO rumor. The layoffs in October impacted over 1k employees in the game division, most of which were transitioning to LOTR from New World, and sources are suggesting the game was cancelled or on the brink at that time.
There are also fears that this is due to Amazon’s AI push with internal teams. New tools were introduced to their game division that heavily pushed generative AI to drop production time, but studio heads have been firmly against it. However Amazon seems to be putting AI before employees in a lot of instances, and is rumored in some cases to be letting employees go that refuse to use it.
AI likely will lead to further layoffs at the trillion dollar giant later this year as Amazon continues to suggest they “evaluate their teams” monthly, and just announced another small round of layoffs earlier today impacted logistic partners.
