LEGO Lord of the Rings game mysteriously disappears

The tagline for LEGO's The Lord of the Rings series of games is, of course, "One Game to Rule Them All," though there are in fact two games in the series: LEGO The Lord of the Rings and LEGO The Hobbit. Though now, in a way, there is no game (unless you've already bought it) because purchasing links for both games have mysteriously disappeared, at least as of today, as reported by Kotaku.

The only statement circulating from Warner Bros., LEGO, or Traveller's Tales (the developer of both games), gives no explanation as to why this has happened, but what is known for sure is that if you already have the game, you can still play it. Kotaku quotes an unnamed Warner Bros source as saying, "Lego: The Lord of the Rings and Lego: The Hobbit will no longer be available for sale in digital stores. The games will remain in players' libraries if they already own them." 

And there's at least a good chance a fair number of new people do own the games as of last month, when both were available for free on Humble for a span of two days. It seemed like perhaps an early Christmas present at the time, but in retrospect it may have been the games' last hurrah. Fans who were still hoping for the rollout of a reconfigured Hobbit game or a new release to finally cover the events of the last Hobbit film (The Battle of the Five Armies), which has been the only LOTR film whose events have been left out of the LEGO game series, must be sorely disappointed. Though as early as 2015 Gamespot was reporting that Warner Bros never intended to cover that film, and the quote hints that perhaps the games themselves were seen as a way for Warner Bros to increase excitement for the last film in the series. 

Four years after the release of the final film, looks like the games may have just retired to their hobbit holes.