Acclaimed Czech RPG maker Warhorse Studios, known for its award-winning Kingdom Come: Deliverance duology, could be making a bold shift toward high fantasy according to a new rumor that claims the team has begun working on a game set in the beloved Lord of the Rings universe.
Rumor suggests Warhorse Studios is making a Lord of the rings rpg
Since forming in 2011, Warhorse Studios has only made two games: its 2018 medieval fantasy RPG debut Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and its 2025 sequel. While the first entry garnered some intrigue from RPG gamers, it’s last year’s sequel that propelled Warhorse to another level of acclaim and success, as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 sold a million copies on release day and five million copies total. It also earned an 89 on Metacritic and went on to become one of the 2025 Game Awards’ six nominees for Game of the Year.
After the smash success that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was, fans of the studio have been wondering about what Warhorse’s next big RPG would be and whether it would be set in the Kingdom Come world or an entirely different one.
Warhorse’s rumored Lord of the rings RPG to cost $100 million
In a recent episode of the Tolkien Podcast, Ryszard Chojnowski, a well-known veteran Polish game developer who has history with the other RPG powerhouse in the region: CD Projekt Red, said that Warhorse’s next big RPG will be a massive open world Lord of the Rings game and that it’ll cost quite a pretty penny to produce.
“Kingdom Come 2 developers, Warhorse Studios, are reportedly working on a huge $100 million Lord of the Rings game. This would be a massive shift from their historical roots but fits perfectly within the Embracer Group’s portfolio.”
Chojnowski’s claim that the game would cost $100 million would mean that the project would more than double the reported cost of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which took around $40 million to develop. With the bold shift from medieval RPGs to a high fantasy game set in one of the biggest media franchises of all time, the leap in budget makes sense. It’ll be fascinating to see whether the careful, grounded immersion of the Kingdom Come games will be brought forward into this rumored Lord of the Rings game, or if Warhorse is aiming to go full-blown action adventure with its gameplay and combat; something that the studio has yet to do.
One would have to go back to Monolith’s Middle-earth games to be able to point toward the most recent AAA Lord of the Rings games that were well received, as more recent entries like 2023’s Lord of the Rings: Gollum typically leave much to be desired or come and go without much fanfare. With Warhorse’s name and pedigree, though, this rumored Lord of the Rings RPG is destined to be a major deal if the rumor turns out to be true. It’s important to remember that, while Chojnowski does seem to be a credible source, this is still just a rumor. Even if true, Warhorse is still a good number of years away from officially confirming anything, and even more years away from actually releasing the game.
The post Kingdom Come Deliverance Studio Could Be Making a Lord of the Rings RPG Next appeared first on VICE.
