In a few months' time, Lord of the Rings mania will be picking right back up with the release of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of a new trilogy from the master director. Luckily, this isn't looking like George Lucas' Star Wars formula all over again – Jackson is keeping true to the tone of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, despite stretching the movies out across three new chapters, rather than the initial two. Hey, we'll take whatever we can get!
The very best LOTR games available right now.
VGChartz's Adam Cartwright: "Ever since the advent of full-game downloads on consoles, it seems the market has slowly been shifting towards a digital future where games are delivered through internet connections rather than physical disks. While the convenience this brings is undeniable, and plenty of gamers have embraced having a stuffed memory card in their Vita, there are major pitfalls that are slowly beginning to show, one of which is that games can be delisted without any prior warning, leaving them lost to time unless you bought them before they disappeared."
From GameWatcher: "LEGO Lord of the Rings delisted from Steam, along with LEGO The Hobbit? That what it certainly looks like, as both of TT Games' Middle-Earth LEGO titles have been pulled with no explanation - and fans are wondering if Activision's Ghostbusters game will be gone next.
It's certainly not the only recent Steam casualty of licenses changing hands, but the weird thing about these is - the Middle-Earth license, like TT Games, is still owned by Warner Bros. So why have these games been delisted?"
The middle earth license may be part of WB, but what about the Lego license? There is also the factor of if Lego and WB can be used together and licensed for Video games in this way. Since other Lord of the Ring games aren't being delisted, I think this might have more to do with the Lego license, or the Lego/Lord of the Rings dual license. Or it was always just a short term agreement to use all the licenses together.
So on and so forth. Licensing can be tricky. Ghostbusters is a solely owned IP, so one's first inclination shouldn't be if another WB owned franchise is due for the axe.
I got both of these for free recently from Humble Bundle. I wonder if that was a way of saying "goodbye" or something.
Now we know why they were offered for free twice. I originally thought it was Humble Bundle giving everyone an early Christmas present.
I've a few games that lost their store page but can still be downloaded, so it probably will work the same.
Historically I've only ever heard of 2 games that were delisted and couldn't be redownloaded. PT on the PS4, and some multiplayer-only game on Steam. I'm sure there are plenty of cases, but the 99.99999% case is that if you bought it, you will be able to download and play it for the foreseeable future, Wii Shop Channel closing down notwithstanding.
I am downloading The Hobbit on Steam right now. Seems to be working normally. I figured I better try it to be sure, lol.
Another digital game (in this case maybe three) bites the dust forever. Congrats if you have a physical disc or want to get it used somewhere, because you still can!
Honestly, I'm super excited for this game. Though, I wish they'd announce how the different versions will be different from each other. Will the 3DS version have the same content as the PS3? That seems like important info they should get out.