Amazon's LOTR MMO failed because the company just couldn't get on with Tencent

Turns out the LOTR MMO was a match made in Mordor.

What happens when you give one of the world's biggest licences to two of the world's biggest companies? One of them takes its ball and goes home, it turns out. When Amazon's Lord Of The Rings MMO was suddenly, we were left wondering what it was that had caused the talks between Amazon and Tencent to break down after what felt like a significant amount of hype for the game.

Amazon's initial deal regarding its LOTR MMO was with the Hong Kong company Leyou, a firm that was practically microscopic compared to the gargantuan bulk of Amazon and Tencent. Things were proceeding relatively well untilin December of 2020. That put a spanner in the works: Middle-earth Enterprises—the LOTR rights holder—terminated the MMO's rights to the LOTR licence and made it necessary to hash out a new deal.

Negotiations dragged on, but it seems that Tencent and Amazon just couldn't come to terms on how the Tolkienian pie would be divided. Hartmann makes it sound like the disagreement stemmed from a dispute over which megacorporation would have control over the relevant rights. He mentions that a situation in which Tencent owned the licence and Amazon developed the game was not acceptable, so Amazon decided to bail.

It doesn't seem to have worked out too badly for either company. Tencent continues to pull companies into its orbit with slow-burning inevitability, while Amazon has a couple of successful MMOs on its hands in the form of

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