LOTR: Gollum developer apologizes after game is universally panned

Jimmy2x

Jimmy2x

Posts: 192   +17
Staff
Facepalm: It's getting harder and harder to remember a time when games were actually finished before they were released. And unfortunately for Lord of the Rings game fans, Gollum developer Daedalic Entertainment seems to have forgotten the process altogether. The company released the action-adventure title earlier this week while still riddled with bugs and performance issues, leading some to call it the worst game they've ever reviewed.

Published by Nacon and developed by its subsidiary, Daedalic Entertainment, Gollum's development was announced back in March 2019 and accompanied by a much anticipated 2021 release date. The game's initial release was later delayed until 2022, and later delayed once again until 2023, this time with no definitive release date. The game finally arrived earlier this week... and that's where things went very, very wrong.

According to Daedalic, the additional delays were required to ensure there was time to deliver users "...the best possible experience."

Patience is a virtue that gamers are running short on these days, as developers and publishers have made the "release now, apologize later, finish even later" model a standard for even the biggest releases. Unfortunately for Daedalic, its apology tour began to fall flat before it even got started. Metacritic currently scores Gollum at 36, with the game receiving generally unfavorable reviews from more than 35 critics.

Some of the more colorful reviews included statements such as, "Gollum is probably the worst game set in the famous world, repulsive and unstable like the main character himself." Others, such as the review from DigitallyDownloaded, pulled no punches when voicing its frustration with the long-awaited release. According to its review, "...what makes Gollum stand out is that most other developers and publishers then use their creative teams to try and hide the crass cynicism and capitalism. Daedalic didn't bother with Gollum. This game represents the games industry with its mask off."

The harsh reception from critics, echoed by Gollum user reviews, prompted Daedalic to do what many of today's game companies have done before them: write an apology letter.

Typically, a new game's release being associated with some of the biggest AAA releases in the industry would make for some great press. But when you're keeping close company with botched releases like Battlefield 2042, The Last of Us Part 1, and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, it's a good sign that there's room for improvement.

Like the rocky releases before it, Gollum's development team will likely continue releasing patches to address identified issues, stem the bleeding, and salvage what they can of the game and its fanbase. But based on the comments, reviews, and the release's poor initial reception, Daedalic may not be able to recover the trust of its user population any time soon.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98859-lotr-gollum-developer-apologizes-after-panned-reviewers-gamers.html

 
S

ScottSoapbox

Posts: 598   +1,087
People have long put up with this in a variety of things which is why companies increased the ship now and fix it later.

But I believe people are getting tired of getting screwed and slowly learning to vote with their wallet instead of just taking it and complaining on line.
 
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Kam7r

Posts: 258   +528
NEVER buy a game day one those times... NEVER... wait at least 3 months until it's stable, and 3 months more for it to be what was considered 1.0 or "gold" 5-10years ago ... glad I ride the high sea... and if you "preorder" a game ... congratz, you've won an award , from a famous guy named Darwin !
 
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m4a4

m4a4

Posts: 3,320   +4,524
TechSpot Elite
I do wonder who greenlit this. And who agreed to give them money. At no point did it ever sound like a good idea (and it seems like the team called it in towards the end too)...
 
Z

ZackL04

Posts: 918   +714
Im starting to come to the realization that:

These companies have a beta testing team right? Their job is: “play the game, find the faults” and they are not doing their job. They are likely getting paid to “work” from home and not doing sh**. I would fire my testing team, and find new employees with a passion for what they are doing. If a whole team has 1 job, tells the higher ups “everything is good” well then they are lying or not putting the game through its paces enough.

Plain and simple right?
 
godrilla

godrilla

Posts: 771   +425
Luckily with all these unoptimized games gamers have the opportunity to finally play all those thousands of games that were missed during steam sales. For eg Shadow of Mordor is going for as low as $4 comes with a 4k texture pack, is stable and looks better than this excuse of a game.

 
RudyBob

RudyBob

Posts: 1,046   +1,106
I would have made it a nice game. Take Gollum before the ring and make a story out of it....He could have been this decades penguins
 
J

jonny888

Posts: 175   +350
ZackL04 said:
Im starting to come to the realization that:

These companies have a beta testing team right? Their job is: “play the game, find the faults” and they are not doing their job. They are likely getting paid to “work” from home and not doing sh**. I would fire my testing team, and find new employees with a passion for what they are doing. If a whole team has 1 job, tells the higher ups “everything is good” well then they are lying or not putting the game through its paces enough.

Plain and simple right?
Click to expand...
It is probably nothing to do with the testing/development team (who know very well how good or bad the current state of their game is), and will be entirely driven by "upper management"/publishers who insist the game MUST release by X date.
 
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L

Loli Pop Carbon

Posts: 73   +87
I like what Skill Up says in his honest review, they are better off cutting this game off and admitting they screwed up. Allocate the resources to next project.

None can be done to revive this game.
 
ddferrari

ddferrari

Posts: 710   +383
TechSpot Elite
I never buy a game unless it's a year or more old.

I don't play online; don't have any "buddies" I'm playing with. Let devs work the bugs out and let the price come down. I don't need the latest and greatest to be satisfied...

I have a large enough library to keep me busy, meanwhile. That's on purpose. I don't care if I'm 3 years behind the 8-ball! It always ensures that my "latest GPU" (currently a 12GB 3080 OC) is up to the task. :p
 
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rmcrys

Posts: 364   +291
jonny888 said:
It is probably nothing to do with the testing/development team (who know very well how good or bad the current state of their game is), and will be entirely driven by "upper management"/publishers who insist the game MUST release by X date.
Click to expand...

99.9% of the time, the software and test teams have nothing to do with it. Games are very complex and easily it can take more time to fine tune; but companies want money fast and make a lot of pressure that it must come out quick to generate money.

That's why most of the games are complete but not finished or optimized. At this stage most of the time they are released.
 
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godrilla

godrilla

Posts: 771   +425
rmcrys said:
99.9% of the time, the software and test teams have nothing to do with it. Games are very complex and easily it can take more time to fine tune; but companies want money fast and make a lot of pressure that it must come out quick to generate money.

That's why most of the games are complete but not finished or optimized. At this stage most of the time they are released.
Click to expand...
It's true but they are hurting the games true potential when it comes to revenue and copies sold, by being review bombed. Aren't they making some revenue or income on pre-sales? Unless those took a nosedive because people got burned too many times. One thing is for sure if pre-sales took a nose dive hence the push for unoptimized games faster out the gate to make a quick buck on initial suckers and beta testers. Well eventually those who are getting burned now from initial sales will eventually lose hope as well and stop buying games until they are guaranteed a playable experience imo.
 
T

Tom Yum

Posts: 209   +484
From what I've read about this game, like Redfall even if they fix the bugs they will still be left with at best a mediocre game. The fundamentals of the game just sound poorly thought out. At this stage they are probably better off just cutting their losses and starting on the next game, if they can survive until the next game can be released. A shame, but not every creative idea ends up being a good one.
 
Puiu

Puiu

Posts: 6,085   +5,177
TechSpot Elite
I'm glad I'm not the type that buys on day one :)

Let others alpha test and beta test the games for me. If it is good I'll buy it later (I've done this with so many games).
 
neeyik

neeyik

Posts: 2,740   +3,331
Staff member
Tom Yum said:
From what I've read about this game, like Redfall even if they fix the bugs they will still be left with at best a mediocre game. The fundamentals of the game just sound poorly thought out. At this stage they are probably better off just cutting their losses and starting on the next game, if they can survive until the next game can be released. A shame, but not every creative idea ends up being a good one.
Click to expand...
As one of the very few people who bought the actual game (reason: curiosity, impulse purchase, early onset of senility, take your pick) and owner of almost every other LOTR-licence title, this is pretty much the truth about Gollum.

Games based entirely on stealth are fine, as are those heavily driven by story, as these aren't the reasons why this one is so bad. Games with protagonists that aren't especially likable are somewhat of a harder sell, but given how little of Gollum's life is expanded upon in Tolkien's literature, there was scope to create an entirely non-canon plot.

Making a game for 7 different platforms is pretty challenging, but Daedalic has a decent amount of experience in this area and has some with UE4. It has years of practice behind it in crafting games with puzzles, exploration, and narrative, too. Gollum is, I think, its first third-person action-adventure title but none of these aspects should be deal breakers.

And yet, somehow, Daedalic has created something truly awful and for me, it just doesn't have a single redeeming feature. Admittedly, I haven't progressed especially far in the game, but the sheer tedium of getting through two chapters doesn't bode well for the rest. Animations, cutscenes, dialogue, characterizations, modeling, textures, lighting, you name it -- they're all shockingly bad. Not just bad for a game released in 2023, but bad full-stop.

The technical state of the PC version on release beggars belief -- it doesn't just stutter near-constantly, with assets popping into view all over the place, but it frequently stalls so badly when moving through a level, that the entire engine will freeze and then spin the camera about as it desperately tries to catch up. At one point, I died three times in a row because of this problem, because the freezing didn't affect an internal timer, which resulted in failing a very early, and very basic, mission requirement.

Gollum is an abject failure of everyone concerned -- from art direction to project management, programming to marketing. Daedalic should absolutely just walk away from this one and move on to its next project.
 
J

James Ryan

Posts: 59   +86
ZackL04 said:
Im starting to come to the realization that:

These companies have a beta testing team right? Their job is: “play the game, find the faults” and they are not doing their job. They are likely getting paid to “work” from home and not doing sh**. I would fire my testing team, and find new employees with a passion for what they are doing. If a whole team has 1 job, tells the higher ups “everything is good” well then they are lying or not putting the game through its paces enough.

Plain and simple right?
Click to expand...
It's always money... The testing team is problem sick of listing all the problems only for none of them to get fixed... I have this experience everywhere I work.

Company: "What problems do we need to fix"
Employee: "This problem!"
Company: "Too hard, costs too much"

Every single place I have worked has had this issue...
Game companies would be exactly the same.
 
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