Amazon Game Studios and Leyou Announce New MMO Development Based on The Lord of the Rings

Amazon Game Studios and the Chinese gaming studio Leyou (which owns Warframe) announced today that they will tly develop a new free to play MMO based on The Lord of the Rings for both PC and console.

Here are the highlights:

• The free-to-play, massively multiplayer online game, set in the iconic world of Middle-earth portrayed in The Lord of the Rings literary trilogy, will be published on PC and console
• Development is being led by the same Amazon Game Studios team behind New World, and looks forward to sharing updates on that game in the future
• The Amazon Game Studios team working on the game includes veteran developers who have worked on Rift, and other popular MMOs
• This is the same game that Athlon Games, a subsidiary of Leyou, announced last year. This collaboration combines Amazon’s game technology and the talented MMO developers at Amazon Game Studios with Leyou’s expertise in deg free-to-play games and operating live-service games
• Amazon Studios is separately developing a new Amazon Original TV series based on The Lord of the Rings for Prime Video. The game and TV show are unrelated and being developed separately
• No release date has been set for this game, and we will be sharing the title at a later time

Separately, a new Amazon Original TV Series is being developed based on the Lord of the Rings (no relation to this new game though).

“We’re committed to bringing customers games of the highest quality, both with our own original IP as well as beloved cultural pillars like The Lord of the Rings,” said Christoph Hartmann, VP, Amazon Game Studios. “Tolkien’s Middle-earth is one of the richest fictional worlds in history, and it gives our team of experienced MMO developers – from the same studio developing New World – tremendous opportunity to play and create. We have a strong leadership team in place to helm this new project, and we’re actively growing our team to help build this incredible experience.”

There are currently no screenshots or any other game media available just yet, so I suspect this new Lord of the Rings MMO is at least 2 years away from release.