Embracer Group has also acquired Tripwire Interactive, Singtrix, Tuxedo Labs, Tatsujin, and Bitwave Games, as well as the IP rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Yes.

The Tolkien Estate sold the rights to The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit a long time ago to The Saul Zaentz Company and now Embracer has those rights, so, Embracer basically owns the characters created specifically for those books and they can tell whatever stories they want for that time period using those characters.

Stories in the 2nd age remain with The Tolkien Estate, such as The Silmarillion, Amazon has a license to tell stories for the 2nd age and Embracer won't be able to touch that era without a license of their own but anything from the 3rd age is now Embracer's to do with what they like, Amazon also can't touch stuff specific to The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit without permission from Embracer nor can they tell stories in that time period.

That's my limited understanding of the matter from looking into it in the past, these rights are a bit all over the place. So these games such as Shadow of War/Mordor and that upcoming Gollum game had to gain permission from Saul Zaentz, not the Tolkien Estate, now they need to gain permission from Embracer.

Damnit. You're right, The Silmarillion is mostly first age stories.

I didn't know that Zaentz had access to first age stuff too though, I thought they only had stuff from the 3rd age but they could mention past events if those events were mentioned in the books they acquired the rights too, isn't The Silmarillion/Unfinished Tale still owned by Tolkien Estate?

Variety first reported that the rights were up for sale for $2bn! How did Embracer get them this cheaply? How did the others let them? Lol. The only thing I can think of in Amazon's case is they were reluctant due to the MGM acquisition needing to pass regulation.