Middle-Earth Roleplaying Project ignores Warner's cease and desist letter for now

Skyrim mod, the Middle-Earth Roleplaying project, has been handed a cease and desist order by Warner which owns the rights to gaming projects created based on Tolkien's works. However, the folks behind the mod have contacted a lawyer, and started a petition aimed at Warner, hoping to continue progress on the ambition project.

According to PC Gamer, the mod recreates Frodo's walk to Mordor using locations, characters, and questlines will mirror the plot of the books.

In development since 2008 and ported to the Skyrim engine, so far development is in the early stages with the "Middle-Earth height map in place.

The height map is currently nine times that of the Skyrim install, and the team planned to continue until something with "a quality greater than that in vanilla Skyrim," was created.

After the cease and desist letter was received, work on the mod stopped while the team contacted a lawyer versed in Organisation for Transformative Works. The lawyer is helping the team appeal Warner's claim as the project is considered a "transformative piece," meaning it is "exemplary differential from the original piece so much so that it can be called his own."

Meanwhile, the aforementioned petition currently has 3,618 signatures.

Thanks, PCGamesN.