Lego Lord Of The Rings & Hobbit vanish from sale

As is becoming disappointingly common with games based on movie licenses and whatnot, Lego The Lord Of The Rings and Lego The Hobbit seem to have been pulled from sale on digital stores including Steam without warning or explanation. Folks who already own them can continue to download and play them on Steam, but newcomers will need to track down a boxed copy or download code from another store if they want 'em. I know what you're thinking--that the LOTR and Hobbit movies were boring empty spectacles of "and then... and then... and then..." so w/e--but the plasticised adaptations from Traveller's Tales are fun, and it sucks that this keeps happening.

Steam pages for The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit are still up, but they don't appear in search results and you can't buy them. Their pages are outright removed from the Humble Store.

Publishers Warner Bros. have said nothing about this, why they were removed and whether they might return. Presumably it's the usual sitch of licenses expiring and not being renewed. Sometimes games return from this limbo, and sometimes they don't. Mysteries.

Our former Adam (RPS in peace) quite liked 'em, with plenty of praise in his Lego LOTR review and a fair amount of nodded approval in his Lego The Hobbit review. So these are things some folks might well want to play.

The Humble Store gave the games away free in December, and I guess now we know more about why. Steam and Humble had them heavily discounted in the run-up to the vanishing too. But if you missed out, you'll need to search around other stores for boxed copies or Steam keys. They are still out there, but supplies do now seem limited.