Gollum devs offer "sincere apologies" for the game

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum screenshot
(Image credit: Daedalic Entertainment)

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has launched to utterly dismal reviews, and now developer Daedalic Entertainment is offering apologies for the whole thing.

"We would like to sincerely apologize for the underwhelming experience many of you have had with The Lord of Ring: Gollum upon its release," the tweet says. "We acknowledge and deeply regret that the game did not meet the expectations we set for ourselves or for our dedicated community. Please accept our sincere apologies for any disappointment this may have caused."

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Yes, "The Lord of Ring" is a typo present in the original statement. As someone who writes words on the internet for a living, I'm not going to throw too many stones within this particular glass house, but given all of Gollum's other issues, fans are taking that typo as the icing on a very unpleasant cake.

"Our development team has been working diligently to address the bugs and technical issues many of you experienced. We are committed to providing you with patches that will allow you to enjoy the game to its fullest potential." Patches could indeed improve some of Gollum's most egregious technical issues, but as a reminder we're talking about the worst-reviewed game of 2023 here. The ceiling on that "potential" seems to be pretty low.

Game developers across the industry have offered their sympathy to the Gollum devs since the game's bad reception began, noting that "no one wants to ship a bad game." Here's hoping that Daedalic's next project turns out substantially better, however - reports suggest the studio is already at work on another Lord of the Rings title.

You can read our The Lord of the Rings: Gollum review if you want a full breakdown if you want a full breakdown of everything that went wrong with this one.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.