Gollum Publisher Daedalic Entertainment Shuts Down Internal Development

I played the PS5 version and actually enjoyed it. Well, enjoyed the trophies and that's a bit it.

Gollum not only took the one ring back from them. He dragged them down into the lava with him. This is rough.

Very unfortunate that the company and employees are hitting on hard times because of this game. Hopefully the impacted people find work again soon.

Shame the people lost their roles, hopefully they find something soon.

From this I’m guessing support of the game has ended. From the bits I read it sounded quite buggy so probably not worth continuing with the port if there are no patches to fix issues

It such a shame, because I w actually have always wanted a game starring gollum, so when I heard it there was going to be one I was excited! But to say this game fell below my expectations is a big understatement, it took them, and drove them into the deepest part of the sea.

I actually thought it had a bit more polish than Scarlet and Violet. Maybe the devs could join Game Freak and show them how it's done.

I feel bad for them and I really wish them the best. Honestly, I had a bad feeling about the game since the first news I saw about it here.

They’ve had a couple decent titles. But more subpar when you look at their whole catalogue.

From what I have read they probably should solicit significant help from a third party development studio or just give the game away for someone to actual turn it around.

They made good point and click games years ago but like Deponia and Silence so it’s a shame they can’t make good games anymore.

I don't know much about this game's development history, but I really hope this isn't one of those stories like "Well, we forced them to crunch, didn't give them enough time to make the game right and the game ended up broken and selling poorly. Clearly they can't make games and we should disband the studio!".

That's so painfully common in the industry I can't avoid to default to fear it happened again here...

One bad game can destroy an entire career...

@ozwally I read somewhere that they're still committed to a patch to eliminate the bugs, but the consensus from critics is that even if all the bugs were gone it's still rubbish. Even if this had been well-made, literally nobody was crying out for a game based on playing Gollum. I'll stick with Lego Lord of the Rings/Hobbit and the two Middle Earth: Shadow titles.

This would be no loss to Nintendo Switch if it doesn’t arrive.

"Publishing" = doing nothing, making money off of any possible sales from impulse buyers. There will be no bug patches, and the game is beyond needing 'patches' anyway, it's just fundamentally a bad game.

That's a shame!
Daedalic found their niche and had a good run making adventure games. But it seems like their market was getting smaller (apparently, the performance of their later adventure games was underwhelming), so they tried to make the leap to a different, bigger market and they didn't manage to land their one attempt. So it seems like they've gotten to a point where, as a software developer, they're no longer a viable business.
We're always eager to find someone to blame, to point fingers. But to me, this is just an example of how hard game development is. Particularly for a relatively small company from a non-english speaking country, trying to find its place in the market outside of the indie, low budget sphere.

.. But ... but... .... ..Making games is the best bit!!!!

Maybe it was too ambitious for such a small studio but I realy wanted to play this game, when I saw the state of the game and all the bad reviews I was disapointed, and they even ask an almost full AAA price for this game so the sales must have been disastrous.

@JohnnyC fingers crossed there are fixes for those that already own it.
I actually started playing shadow of war quite recently and really enjoying that, like lord of the rings Arkham knight

Never nice to see people losing their roles. I wish them luck in finding a new job.

Maybe leave Gollum off your CV. Just a thought.

The least they could do after such monstrosity.

About the 25 folks losing their jobs, the Gollum disaster isn’t their fault because most likely they were only following the poor direction, so if they’re good at their job, they’ll have no issue to find another.

Yeah, this is the production scoop that got Daedalic a buyout deal with Nacon.

But it's likely also the reception of this game upon completion that has forced Nacon's hand in telling them to shut down internal development. :x

@JohnnyC You should also check out Aragorn's Quest on the Wii. Such an underrated gem. It's a really good game.

Losing your job from a company that isn't good at things is an opportunity - not an impediment.

@Cashews Tell that to folks with pending unemployment bud. No; losing your job is never a “good thing.”

Good game, bad game, these folks have families to feed. Hope they land on their feet.

@JR150 And it too could also save it. Donkey Kong save Nintendo, Sonic save Sega, Mega Man save Capcom, and Final Fantasy save Squaresoft.

I frequently read the complaint that they „dared asking full price for it“. Did you consider that they may have had to? License and development cost likely meant they had to recoup a large sum. They couldn’t and now they’re shutting down.

@Half-ShellHero Got it on PS3. Agreed, it's alright and probably a lot better than this.

Lol good. It looked awful from the get go.

Midnight Suns got canned on Switch because it didn't sell. It's only the badly reviewed games which get released on this console

They were never going to make any more Deponia games again anyway. Their best days were behind them even before Gollum.

@SpaceboyScreams Ha yes let a studio who's game got mediocre review score and sell worst show a studio who's game look bad but sell like hotcakes how to do things. Ever wonder that perhaps Scarlet and Violet were meant not to look good?

I mean, when a studio that doesn't have much credit to their name has such a disastrous launch, you can't really expect anything less. This game to me just didn't look very promising right from the very beginning.

Too bad. They could be the Ed Wood of videogames industries.

Chance wasted.

@slowpoke_tail And the graphic of the game matched.

Even just a Frodo Stealth and action game like the Frodo sequences in the original Xbox, PS2 games would've made wonders instead of this dreadful choice (even though I recognize they tried to be unique but, you know, if it ain't broke, why fix it?). So sad, LOTR deserves good adaptations.

If it does come to Switch I ABSOLUTELY have to play it. I love awful games and if the Switch port is janky as heck that's all-the-better.

@Serpenterror respectfully I don't think I've ever heard a weirder opinion in my entire life. I'm sure it was an intentional decision because they knew it would sell like hotcakes no matter how garbage the game was but why would you defend them like that lol