Classic Lord of the Rings video game mod hit with copyright notice
One does not simply mod into Mordor.
A Lord of the Rings themed mod for Total War: Attila has been hit with a copyright notice.
The mod in question is Rise of Mordor, and it has been around for eons. And yet, in the same week that the Lord of the Rings film and game rights have also happened to go up for sale, Warner Bros has issued a DMC takedown claim to its developers. Interesting timing.
In a statement (thanks, Game Watcher), Rise of Mordor's devs say: "... we have received word from ModDB officials that Warner Bros has sent them a DMCA takedown request to remove Rise of Mordor from their databases. We are grateful to ModDB for giving us time to put our affairs in order before the page is taken down.
"From what we know, this has to do with copyright infringement, as Warner Brothers holds rights to making games related to both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies. At the same time, we do not know the specific reason triggering their intervention, seeing as we are a modification for an existing game and a non-commercial project.
"We have sent emails to the Intellectual Property team of Warner Brothers and we are currently waiting on some form of answer, as well as a way to continue uploading our work here. Our developers are still going strong, and you will soon see some previews we're sure you will enjoy!"
In the meantime, the Rise of Mordor team is looking into rebranding, and finding a name that will not greet them with another copyright notice.
And yet, despite all this, the mod still appears to be available to download on Nexus Mods. How long it stays this way, however, remains to be seen.