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Once again, the video game industry is experiencing massive layoffs. This time, it is Amazon that is cutting jobs. As part of the 14,000 layoffs that the company has announced, there will be significant job losses in Amazon Game Studio. It seems that their MMOs will be most directly hit, with the untitled Lord of the Rings MMO’s fate unknown and New World entering maintenance mode just over four years since it launched.

Steve Boom, vice president of Audio, Twitch, and Games at Amazon, confirmed that the company would “halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work – specifically around MMOs – within Amazon Game Studio.” This will include “significant role reductions” at studios in Irvine and San Diego. 

There has been no confirmation if the untitled Lord of the Rings MMO that has been in development would be cancelled or changed as a result of this, but we’ve already seen that New World, a dark-fantasy MMO that went live in 2021, is not planning to deliver any new content or updates going forward. An announcement on the game’s website confirmed that they were entering maintenance mode as a result of the layoffs, despite recently releasing their Season 10 content and Nighthaven expansion. According to the announcement, the development team has “reached a point where it is no longer sustainable to continue supporting the game with new content updates.” They intend to keep the servers running through 2026, but that is going to depend on how long Amazon chooses to keep those servers up.

It isn’t an ideal situation, though it is one we’ve seen play out repeatedly over the past year. The gaming industry is going through it right now, and not even a giant corporation like Amazon is safe from layoffs.

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