Lord of the Rings : Battle for Middle Earth 2 [ Edited ]

[Jcorp21]

You should make Lord of the Rings : Battle for Middle Earth 2 available for download with Wrath of the Litch King DLC and make a #3! Two was very enjoyable and 3 could be done very well. Would make for a good future release (if done in a consumer friendly way).

[ivrognard · Accepted solution]

@Jcorp21 They can't. EA can't distribute, publish, develop, patch and so on anything based on the LOTR franchise. 

When the contract expired, EA lost the renewal, as it could not compete with the offer made by Warner. The LOTR IP now is with Warner, so EA can't do anything. IF EA would offer for sale again the LOTR games developed by their own studios, they would breach the copyright laws in US (and EA is a US based company). 

And whilt the Tolkien Estate website still list EA as a licensed company, the truth is that they were too lazy to bring up-to-date the information about who still has a license to use the LOTR franchise (their site still lists companies that are not even around anymore and went belly-up some time ago). And Warner doesn't care much about the games developed by EA (which are, in my opinion, way better than whatever did so far). 

[ivrognard · Accepted solution]

@Jcorp21 They can't. EA can't distribute, publish, develop, patch and so on anything based on the LOTR franchise. 

When the contract expired, EA lost the renewal, as it could not compete with the offer made by Warner. The LOTR IP now is with Warner, so EA can't do anything. IF EA would offer for sale again the LOTR games developed by their own studios, they would breach the copyright laws in US (and EA is a US based company). 

And whilt the Tolkien Estate website still list EA as a licensed company, the truth is that they were too lazy to bring up-to-date the information about who still has a license to use the LOTR franchise (their site still lists companies that are not even around anymore and went belly-up some time ago). And Warner doesn't care much about the games developed by EA (which are, in my opinion, way better than whatever did so far).