Gollum Developer Daedalic Entertainment Halts Development on New Lord of the Rings Game

Daedalic Entertainment, the developer of the much maligned The Lord of the Rings: Gollum game, is no longer going to be developing games at all. Instead, the company owned by Nacon will now shift its focus to publishing games. That means that development on the new Lord of the Rings game the company was working on after Gollum has been halted, though it's unclear right now what the fate of that game looks like beyond today's news.

News of Daedalic's new plans came from statements provided to GamesWirtschaft which said Daedalic will focus on publishing games moving forward with "eight promising releases" on the horizon. Daedalic has developed numerous games over the years with the most recent being Gollum, A Year of Rain, and State of Mind with just as many published over the years, too.

In the statements provided to GamesWirtschaft, the studio called this a "difficult turning point" but also described the transition as "a new beginning in the long history of Daedalic Entertainment." That change will also affect some positions within the company. Of the more than 90 employees at Daedalic, 25 will be affected.

"We value each and every member of our team and it is important to us that the transition goes as smoothly as possible," Daedalic said. "Therefore, we will support our former employees in finding new opportunities within our network."

To say that Gollum did not meet expectations would be an understatement. After getting lambasted due to bugs, finicky mechanics, and downgraded graphics from what was shown off before to what got released, the game went as low as a 1.1 user score on Metacritic. Those user scores can sometimes be fudged but sensationalize and passionate reviews, but whether you put stock in that one or the critic score, the latter was hardly any better.

Daedalic issued an apology to Gollum players almost immediately after the game released and committed to updates and fixes for the game's problems moving forward, though it's unclear what plans for that look like now that Daedalic is shifting to publishing games instead. As mentioned previously, it's also unclear what the future of the other in-development Lord of the Rings game looks like now that work on it has been paused.