Why can't you buy The Battle for Middle-earth anymore?

The Battle for Middle-earth is a 2004 real-time strategy game from EA Los Angeles, built on Peter Jackson's film trilogy, film clips, and film voice actors included. Critics liked it: it holds 82 out of 100 on Metacritic, and according to EA it sold above one million units worldwide by the end of 2004. None of that protected it, because a licensed game can only be sold while the license lasts.

EA's license expired. The official game servers for The Battle for Middle-earth were permanently closed on December 31, 2010, by EA Games, due to the expiration of The Lord of the Rings video game license, a fact EA announced in its own shutdown notice on December 1, 2010. Polygon, writing in 2023, adds that EA's licensing deal with New Line Cinema, in place since 2001, expired as well, and that Warner Bros. assumed stewardship of the games afterward.

The games were also never carried into the digital era. They predate EA's modern storefront habits, and once the license lapsed there was no one who could put them back up. Polygon notes that a modern player cannot simply visit the Origin storefront, GOG.com, or Game Pass to try the series, and PCGamesN states it plainly: the original games are not available to purchase anymore, digitally or otherwise, so you have to dig out your old discs or find one second hand.

That is the whole answer, and it is why the physical copies matter. The used disc market is the only route to a legitimate copy: no Steam page, no GOG release, no remaster, just the 2004 and 2006 discs changing hands. What keeps the games alive after purchase is fan work, covered below and labeled for what it is.