The Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC will be a free download for all players who own Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The DLC was originally going to be sold separately, with all profits from the DLC set to go to the family of ex-Monolith developer Michael Forgey, who passed away earlier this year. However, after some confusion as to whether money from purchases outside of the US would go to the family, Warner Bros. IE decided to make the DLC free and instead make a donation to the Forgey family separately.
Everybody who has already pre-ordered the Forthog DLC will receive a full refund.
In a post on the Warner Bros. announcements board, the publisher emphasized that the company always intended to donate all of the DLC profits to the family. However, the publisher worried that advertising the fact that all proceeds would go to the Forgey family would put them in legal trouble outside of the United States.
Our decision not to promote the donation outside the U.S. (even though we intended to donate the money) caused many to question where funds from other territories were going. Answering that direct question itself could have triggered compliance obligations or put us in violation of cause marketing laws in some of the 241 territories in which the content was available.Additionally, the Warner Bros post states that the development team sent out a factually incorrect tweet that said that money coming from outside the United States would not go to the family. The publisher again emphasized that this was untrue and that they always intended to give all profits to the family.
The publisher went on to apologize for the whole fiasco and regrets the decision to tie sales of the Forthog DLC to how much money would go to the Forgey family.
We now recognize that tying our donation to sales of the DLC was not the best way to achieve our goal of offering financial support to the family and creating a lasting memorial to Michael Forgey. We sincerely apologize to the fans and to the Forgey family for the confusion we created.While Warner Bros. said that they will instead make a direct donation to the family, the publisher's post did not say exactly how much money will be donated. The post also did not state when the DLC will be available for owners of Shadow of War.
If you would still like to give money to the Forgey family, you can do so here, directly.
