Player First Games and WB Games San Diego also axed.

Wonder Woman cancelled.

IGN article

Yeah, not surprised. WB's been on something of a fatal stall since their less than sensible merger with Discovery.

A pity. I could not get over the way Shadow of Mordor mishandled Tolkien's legendarium, but I was still looking forward to the Wonder Woman game, I could easily imagine that license as a much better fit for their kind of game. Would be cool to see Diana get a better video game treatment than being just the worst person imaginable in Injustice or killed off in that wretched Suicide Squad fart of a game.

I'm surprised they didn't mention Lord of the Rings among their "key franchises – Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones", but maybe that's for the best. The way things have been going for Middle-Earth in recent years I'd rather every corporation just stay away from it.

Even if their best years were behind them, it's still sad to see a legendary studio become yet another statistic to the faltering of the industry.

I'm pretty sure it's only owned by the Tolkien estate. As to who currently holds the license to make what it's sort of a mess I don't quite care enough to untangle in detail, but since WB just released the animated War of the Rohirrim movie like two months ago, and a tabletop wargame based on that has also been released, I have to assume WB has at least some of the rights to make LotR related games and stuff (at least as long as they keep it in the "Peter Jackson-verse").

It feels like Battle Royale in the gaming industry nowadays. All those acquisitions are fizzling away fast, leaving behind a lot of talent and games behind.

I was hoping 2025 would be better than 2024, but at this rate, it's probably going to be another rough year.

It is, but the exclusive(?) licensing rights should be with WB again, for the couple new LOTR films they have announced and likely are already in the works.

Peaked in 2005, but they had a good run. Gave us some hallmark masterpieces like Blood, Tron 2.0 or FEAR, though it had been mostly downhill since then with a possible asterisk for the Middle-earth games. Wasn't impressed by those, but they seemed pretty popular at the time.

EDIT:
The Wonder Woman game smelled of "never gonna happen" for a while now, so no shock it got fully cancelled. Here is an article from just a bit over 2 weeks ago:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/02/07/wbs-promised-wonder-woman-game-is-in-deep-trouble-says-new-report/

Wait, they were the guys behind TRON 2.0? I didn't make the connection. That's probably my favorite FPS of all time. Damn, now I'm quadruple sad.

That sucks. And a shame we never got Monolith's oldest games, unless there were legal issues even with titles like Claw.

The studio going under doesn't necessarily mean those games won't end up here.
Still hoping AVP 2 will make it to GOG.

Monolith closed, that hurts. It's gone the creators of NOLF and FEAR.

The gameplay of Shadow of Mordor and War wasn't that bad. Quiet a nice power fantasy in the Middle-earth universe but not very faithful to the lore. I think it wasn't also not meant to be taken serious judging by the DLC for that Elben assassin of which I can't remember the name.

I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy those games, possibly even a lot, if they weren't wearing the LotR skin. But like I said, I just could never get over how they handled it. It's not just that it's not faithful, but the ways it's unfaithful, and not just to the lore but the deeper sense of Tolkien's work.

I enjoyed the War of the Ring RTS a lot, even though it has a Balrog leading Sauron's army in the final battle, and goofy stuff like a mission where the dwarves make a cartoonish Wile E. Coyote style catapult, I was even able to have a lot of fun with the Third Age RPG, which is probably the goofiest, most pants-on-head LotR thing I'ever seen (and that includes the Russian Hobbit film), where you play as a knock-off Fellowship trying to catch up to the real Fellowship, you meet Aragorn who speaks to you in edited sound-bites from the films and in the end you have melee fight with the Eye of Sauron. But those games feel like having a well meaning attempt at a tabletop RPG set in Middle-Earth with your mates, or maybe a couple kids waving sticks around and shouting "I'm Aragorn! No, I'm Aragorn!". Can't be mad at stuff like that. Shadow of Mordor on the other hand not only violates the lore in most bizarre ways, but does it with such a self serious attitude, and is so full of themes that just feel wrong. It feels like a Punisher game that got re-written as LotR at the last moment.