The Lord of the Rings: Gollum devs apologize for 'underwhelming experience'

Daedalic Entertainment will deploy patches to fix various technical and performance issues in the game.

Daedalic Entertainment
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After some long delays, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was released this week for Xbox Series X, PS5, and PC. It was met with a harsh critical response, currently sitting as the lowest rating game on Metacritic this year. It also received substantial backlash from fans over a plethora of technical and mechanical issues. Developer Daedalic Entertainment has released a statement on the ordeal, apologizing for the disappointment and vowing to address the fixable issues.

The statement from Daedalic Entertainment was shared on the official Twitter account for the Gollum video game. “We acknowledge and deeply regret that the game did not meet the expectations we set for ourselves or for our dedicated community,” the post reads. “Please accept our sincere apologies for any disappointment this may have caused.

Gollum leaning against a rock.

Source: Daedalic Entertainment

Further down in the statement, Daedalic confirms that it is committed to releasing patches that address the bugs and technical issues plaguing the experience. Several reviews for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, including ours here at Shacknews, pointed out frequent performance hitches, janky camera controls, and graphical issues as elements that marred the experience. Gollum has also been criticized for its core gameplay and design.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum may be the worst-reviewed game of the year, but Daedalic Entertainment is just the latest developer to release a statement apologizing for bugs, performance errors, and other issues shortly after the launch of a game. Naughty Dog and Respawn Entertainment had to play damage control shortly after the PC releases of The Last of Us Part 1 and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, respectively. We’ll be watching to see what updates come to Gollum in the future.

News Editor

Donovan is a young journalist from Maryland, who likes to game. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge Scream nerd and film fanatic that will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_

From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 26, 2023 10:00 AM

    Donovan Erskine posted a new article, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum devs apologize for 'underwhelming experience'

    • reply
      May 26, 2023 10:09 AM

      They had the world in the palm of their hand and squandered it, now nobody will attempt a gollum game for years. Think about all the quality gollum content we're not gonna get now.

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      May 26, 2023 11:42 AM

      This thing was doomed from the start. Terrible concept, an apology for what? Having bad game ideas?

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        May 26, 2023 6:05 PM

        Yeah apologising for making something bad is just weird.

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      May 26, 2023 11:45 AM

      I was reading that this game was originally scheduled for a 2021 release. It got delayed by 1.5 years and I don’t think that helped at all.

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      May 26, 2023 11:50 AM

      100% they had this written a month ago

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