Not sure what Fanatical have to do in this discussion about a steam giveaway on Humble, but most likely data mining reasons. They also like to spam you about the sales of games on your wish list, and the new thingy they have merge fanatical and steam wishlists. so the answer is maybe also sniping customers away from steam store,

Well no, they were pretty fast paced and full to the brim with slapstick and poop jokes, so Tolkien would have vomited himself to death after watching half an hour of this crap.

It's just that the plot advanced with the speed of a legless Lego Legolas.

I think that was my fault. I've seen a lot more of these offers from Fanatical (I hate that name), and I guess I forgot that it was Humble Bundle being discussed here. But I would assume that any point about the motivations of Fanatical would be relevant to Humble Bundle as well.

Blah, I wasn't paying close enough attention to the game promos lately and missed out on that one twice now apparently. Grrr. I got the Lord of the RIngs one though, looking forward to checking that one out soon. I heard a rumour the games wont be available for sale anymore, anyone know of any truth to that? Wonder if they're losing use of the trademarks for sale like the Doctor Who games had happen a year or so ago.

People are assuming that they're going to be de-listed from official sale. It happened previously for a time with LEGO The Hobbit but then it was returned but wide speculation has been that it's just living on borrowed time.

It's likely the licensing that isn't being renewed. Seems strange given Warner Bros' have already paid for Tolkien licensing with the Shadow of Mordor/War games and others but I guess the LEGO versions weren't guaranteed moneymakers, especially considering the alleged Five Armies DLC for The Hobbit that never materialized and left that game "unfinished" in terms of story mirroring film treatments.

Yeah, that's one of the big problems with games that license various media/trademarks etc. of big properties, is that such licensing agreements almost always are not in perpetuity but with a range of 5-10 years or so because it is just too expensive to license things in perpetuity like that. So after a few years they lose the licensing of one or more things and can't sell it anymore nor bring it back without re-licensing everything again, and the chances are that the licensing costs the same or more even than it did the first time per se, but the game will likely not make anywhere near as much money as it originally did so there's greater risk and less financial incentive to bring such games back from the dead.

Then when you have multiple things licensed such as LEGO + Star Wars or LOTR etc., it just gets more thick and complex of a legal mess. One of the biggest disappointments to me personally is the fact that Lord of the Rings Battle For Middle Earth 2 is not available on any digital distributors due to such licensing issues and probably wont ever come back either, and it is IMHO one of the best RTS games ever made. I own it on DVD so I can still play it, but it'd be convenient to have it on a digital store, and for friends or others to be able to buy it for multi-player.

Dang IP laws ruin everything. :)