Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War Getting Free DLC Character To Honor Late Executive Producer

The team at Monolith Productions have been working on the follow-up to Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War, for some time. But in the midst of the sequel's development, it lost a member of its squad, Mike "Forthog" Forgey, who served as the game's executive producer.

To honor him, Monolith confirmed that it would be introducing a special Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC character – and now it appears that it'll be offered for free.

Originally, the developer planned to donate the proceeds from sales of the DLC character to help Forgey's family, but unfortunately excluded a few states in the process. With that, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertamnet clarified that the decisions behind that weren't for the best, and will now offer the DLC for free to everyone who purchases the game. The family will still get a donation from the publisher, though.

Here's the full statement from the publisher. You can also see the trailer featuring the Forthog character above.

"The Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC was created by the team at Monolith Productions to immortalize Michael Forgey, a dear friend and colleague, and to raise funds to help support his widow and children.

Specifically, we decided to sell the DLC worldwide and donate all profits from the DLC to the family. Although we decided to donate all profits to the family, we only planned to actively promote this donation in the U.S. (excluding certain states based on their charitable promotion laws). We hoped this approach would raise as much money as possible for the Forgey family in compliance with the law. 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, a factually incorrect tweet from our team exacerbated the confusion by stating that international funds would not be going to the family. For absolute clarity; our intention was always to give all profits from the DLC, worldwide 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.

To ensure the two original aims are still met and to provide transparency to the community, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will instead make a donation directly to the Forgey family. The DLC will be withdrawn from sale and will be a free download for owners of Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Anyone who has purchased the DLC will receive a full refund. If there is interest in donating directly to the family, please visit their youcaring site."

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War will release on October 10th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.