How many “bad” games have to come out before developers and publishers realize that the public will no longer remain silent? At least it was clear to Warner Bros. Discovery that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had to be postponed after receiving feedback from players. Perhaps Daedalic Entertainment should have paid attention to what Warner Bros. Discovery did. Instead, it must now apologize for the release of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum might have been better off waiting a little longer to give Daedalic Entertainment more time to fine-tune it.
Since its official release earlier this week, critics and viewers alike have expressed their dislike for the game, which stars the title character from the legendary JRR Tolkien series.
The internet has been outspoken in ridiculing The Lord of the Rings: Gollum for a variety of reasons including its looks, a slew of bugs, a poor user interface and more.
Now Daedalic Entertainment has issued a response which essentially says there is nothing you can do but apologize for not meeting expectations.
We’re curious as to why we’re getting so many games that start in such a bad state lately.
Set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Gollum does not make a positive impression on critics and players. From unsolvable puzzles to the unsavable enemy AI and unresponsive button presses, things have gone wrong in the game. As a result, it now has one of its lowest Metacritic scores of all time, which is surprising considering Redfall only came out last month.
Daedalic is aware of the harsh criticism of the game and wants viewers to know that work is underway to fix the game’s many performance issues. It assures fans that it will make improvements and plans to release patches to make it easier for players to enjoy the game as intended.
Of course fixing a game is one thing. But you can’t necessarily make a “bad” game objectively better.
It feels like the only option for Daedalic Entertainment right now is to sell the game at a discount and hope for the best.
As more and more studios release games that don’t meet industry standards, we wonder why.
Do developers and publishers save money by not doing QA testing of their games? Or do they just believe that gamers willingly spend money on inferior titles?
These are questions we may never get an answer to, but at least we hope this worrying trend ends sooner rather than later.
We won’t be surprised if Daedalic isn’t the last studio to apologize for the sad state of their game upon release this year.
If it’s any consolation, some games prove that not all developers and publishers are content with putting out inferior products. Diablo 4, for example, was delayed for a long time and had to go through several open beta tests before Blizzard Entertainment could be convinced of the quality on June 6th. The release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has also been postponed for further polishing and it’s safe to say that it was worth it for Nintendo. Finally, Final Fantasy 16’s lengthy development process is due to Square Enix’s commitment to quality, which has now resulted in a game that will be released without a day-one patch.
As a bonus, Take-Two Interactive revealed that Rockstar Games won’t settle for anything less than perfection with Grand Theft Auto 6.
