From the very first day we saw the game, we knew it was going to be bad. And not just bad, but extremely bad. The folks at Daedalic acquired the rights to Gollum to develop a video game, and the result was terrible.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was always a somewhat peculiar project, from the choice of protagonist to the fact that the developer had no previous experience in creating a game of this kind. Daedalic Entertainment, based in Hamburg, made a name for itself with graphic adventures like Deponia.
With The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, they transitioned to an action-adventure stealth game. Gollum suffered multiple delays (its release was initially planned for 2021) and finally hit the shelves in late May 2023, receiving the worst possible reviews.
Deadelic was going to develop more games… but no
The day after the release of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, we learned that Daedalic already had plans to make another game based on Tolkien’s beloved fantasy books.
The news came directly from the German government, which had provided part of the funding and publicly shared the information. This caused panic among all of us who love Tolkien’s legacy.
However, the extremely low sales of the game have had a devastating effect on Daedalic Entertainment. The studio announced the closure of its development division, including the team responsible for The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. This implies that the new project will never see the light of day.
Daedalic Entertainment will now focus on game publishing in the future. The company was acquired by Nacon last year for around $60 million.
Fortunately, The Lord of the Rings can still expect many other projects, such as the survival and crafting game Return to Moria (scheduled for this autumn) and the ongoing projects by Wētā Workshop and Amazon (the latter being an MMO).
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