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The Lord of the Rings Gollum developer Daedalic Entertainment has decided to shut down its internal game development studio after receiving heavy backlash over its release of their creation centering on the infamous corrupted Hobbit.
According to news outlet Games Wirthschaft, Daedalic Entertainment is instead going to place its focus on publishing games in the future as it already has a slew of games currently slated for release in Unrailed, Barotrauma, and Shadow Tactics among others. In addition to the closing of their development team and subsequent move over to publishing, the company has sadly revealed that 25 out of their 90 employees have been affected by the transition.
Unfortunately, the shuttering of Daedalic Entertainment’s game development department also means that production on the new LOTR game, which has been in the works since mid-2022, is now being indefinitely halted. This means those that were looking forward to seeing the studio’s redemption effort featuring a completely different character from the J.R.R. Tolkien franchise will now have to wait even longer as it doesn’t seem like production on the follow-up is going to get restarted any time soon.
It’s currently unclear whether Daedalic Entertainment will pick up game development in the future once again as they have not mentioned what their future plans are in terms of creating new titles. Based on the primarily negative reaction that their most recent project has received, however, their decision to move away from this facet of the company doesn’t seem all that surprising as most community members found Lord of the Rings Gollum to be a largely “underwhelming experience” that made the devs release a public apology.
