a_skeleton_05
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So I have always wondered what goes into a decision like this where you have an existing game in the space that has been in place for a while. I really doubt that another company can come in and immediately demand the closure of another company's product just because they want to release a new version of that same product.
Unless that was something previously agreed to by standing stone games before they purchased the rights to Lord of the rings online.
This isn't a question of the Amazon people making the choices to cut LOTRO off, it's a question of the rights owners deciding to allow someone new use the IP.
When Turbine or whoever originally set up to do LOTRO, they would have had to talk to the Tolkein people or whoever owned the video game rights to the IP and set up a licensing agreement to use the IP in return for money etc... This would have had time limitations with options to renew. The publisher/dev do not own the rights to the IP and are beholden to the license in order to have the game running. If the owners of the IP want to make a deal with another group, they can, and can end the licensing deal with the LOTRO folks if renewal is up in the air. It's entirely possible that since nobody else wanted the IP until now, they were just extending the deal to the LOTRO people until someone else came along.
Can't really know what exactly is going on without specific details of the original agreement/renewals.