War in the North Returns After Seven Years Gone
Aspyr shadow-dropped a Legacy Edition of the 2011 action RPG seven years after it vanished from stores. It's $19.99, and owners of the original pay full price.
A game that stopped being purchasable in 2019 went back on sale on August 11 with no warning. Aspyr Media put The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, the 2011 co-op action RPG from the now-closed Snowblind Studios, back on storefronts as a Legacy Edition, with no announcement, no preorder page, and no press cycle ahead of it. It costs $19.99 on Steam, Epic, GOG, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and Switch 2, with 10% off at launch. That is the whole news, and the reason to care is not the remaster. It is that a game you could once buy became a game you could not, and stayed that way for seven years.
Why it disappeared in the first place
War in the North was Snowblind's take on Middle-earth: a three-player action RPG where you and two friends play a Ranger, a Loremaster, and a Champion running a parallel campaign to the Fellowship's, with a Great Eagle you can call down on a fight. Warner Bros. published it in November 2011. Snowblind closed the following year. Then the licensing ran out. The game was pulled from Xbox 360 in December 2018, and on February 13, 2019, its Steam price was quietly set to $0.00, which is the storefront equivalent of locking the door: existing owners kept it, nobody new could get it. The widely accepted explanation is that Warner Bros.' Middle-earth rights deal expired and was not renewed. No announcement, no sale, no warning to buy it while you still could. What unlocked it is corporate plumbing. Embracer Group bought Middle-earth Enterprises, the rights holder, in August 2022 for around $395 million. Aspyr is an Embracer subsidiary. The licensor and the publisher now sit under the same roof, so the problem became one Embracer could solve for itself.
What the Legacy Edition actually changes
This is a rebuild of the old game, not a new one, and Aspyr is upfront about that. The work is mostly the unglamorous kind that keeps a 15-year-old game running:
Under the hood: a 64-bit build (the original was 32-bit), 4K support, and 60 fps on capable hardware
Online co-op restored: Epic Online Services replaces Games for Windows Live, the dead backend that broke the original's multiplayer years ago. Up to three players online, or local splitscreen
Quality of life: autosave, hot-swapping between the three characters without reloading, full control over your AI companions' gear and skills, better enemy target locking, and health, mana, and EXP bars for your party
Gyro aiming on PS5, Switch, and Switch 2
Early buyers seem happy with it. The Steam page sits at Very Positive, 92% across roughly 400 reviews at the time of writing. The catch, and it is a real one If you bought War in the North in 2011, you pay the full $19.99 again. There is no free upgrade and no owner's discount, and that is the loudest complaint in the game's Steam discussions right now. Rereleasing a fixed version of a game people already own, at full price, is a choice, and it is fair to say so plainly. Here is the other way to hold it, though. This game was gone. Not expensive, not hard to run, gone, because two companies could not agree on paperwork. Seven years is a long time for a co-op RPG that a lot of people remember fondly to be unbuyable at any price. Aspyr also did the boring, genuinely useful work of ripping out a dead multiplayer service so the co-op functions again, which is more than most rereleases bother with. If you never played it, $19.99 for a Middle-earth co-op RPG that three of you can run in splitscreen is an easy weekend. If you already own the 2011 version, the $19.99 is the price of the fixes, and only you can decide whether the working online co-op is worth it.
Where to get it
Out now: August 11, 2026
Price: $19.99, with 10% off at launch through late August
Platforms: PC (Steam, Epic, GOG), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2
Buy: Steam