License The Lord of the Rings is today at the center of much discussion, in particular thanks to the series The Rings of Power which began streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon is betting a lot on this adaptation, and had probably planned to associate it with its MMOs The Lord of the Rings, in development for a time before it was cancelled. We now know a little more about the reason for this cancellation with an interview with the president of Amazon Games, Christoph Hartmannwho answered questions from GameSpot.
Two captains too big for one ship
Christoph Hartmann therefore returned behind the scenes of the failure of this highly anticipated MMO, stating that the MMO ended very quickly when Leyou, who worked on the game, was sold to Tencent. Things would then have become very complicated between Tencent and Amazon Games. If several issues were considered, it was finally Amazon Games who withdrew from the project:
” Of course, maybe we could have worked with Tencent to do something, but i think we are too big as companies to really become partners working together on a project that they own the license to, and we’re developing the game. So we decided it was best not to work together. »
He then clarifies that all the negotiations lasted too long, which would have precipitated the MMO even faster towards its downfall. The sharing of such property, and therefore the sharing of revenues, was therefore too complicated for these two entities.
And we imagine that the big winner in all this is Embracer, which recently got its hands on the rights to adaptations of the license.