Turbine to assume LotRO control from Codemasters in Europe

Codemasters will cease to operate Lord of the Rings Online in Europe as of June 1, with developer Turbine taking control of the game.

Turbine confirmed the move today, saying it was rolling the game's American and European operations into "one mega-service" called LOTRO Global Service.

There's a lengthy FAQ on the matter here. Downtime will be involved, and European players will be forced to migrate their existing Codemaster accounts over to Turbine.

Boxed products and Game Time Cards published by Codemasters will cease to work after the change, and any auctions you have going on may well be wiped, so if you're a keen player you do need to pay attention.

Those who play DDO Unlimited may recall the same thing happening last August when the game went free to play and Turbine took over control of the game's European servers.

LotRO went free-to-play in September last year, and saw revenue triple as a result.

The game was originally published in 2007, and has remained in constant service.