How did Tolkien's estate sign off on this?

[cal-mo-dee]

I'm not saying anything about the game. It looks great. I only started playing it, I'm sure it's great (bloody) fun.

LoTR is not about sneaking around, backstabbing orcs, and mind-raping captured stragglers to uncover the location of the next victims. There are plenty of franchises where this would have made sense.

What a strange commercial choice.

[NZPorterDJ]

The Tolkien Estate wasn't involved.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, sold the film, stage and merchandising rights of those works to United Artists in 1968, who in turn sold them to The Saul Zaentz Company in 1976 which licenses them through Tolkien Enterprises.

The Tolkien Estate as such, headed by Christopher Tolkien still retains the rights to the other works that were never published or works like the Silmarillion that Tolkien didn't include in the rights sold.

It's why we'll never see anything beyond the Hobbit and LoTR and various reworkings within the rights owned and administered through Tolkien Enterprises.

[cal-mo-dee]

Thanks. That explains it.