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Daedalic Entertainment apologizes for "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum" quality & promise to improve it [Project was their biggest challenge thus far]

Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,367
Ibis Island

View: https://twitter.com/GollumGame/status/1662124108614717448?s=20

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While such apologizes have become a bit too common in the gaming space, it's still nice to see them (Even if it shouldn't come to this point at all). Considering the size of daedalic and the lofty ambitions they had for the game, it was a shame they couldn't manifest what they wanted from day one. Hopefully through feedback and updates they'll be able to get the title to a point that more LOTR fans can better enjoy it.
 
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selfnoise

selfnoise

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,449
Cyberpunk was really a trendsetter in the "Twitter pic apology on videogame letterhead" thing. I wonder if they have the letterhead ready to go beforehand.
 
julia crawford

julia crawford

Took the red AND the blue pills
Member
Oct 27, 2017
35,110
Solidarity with the devs tbh. Never easy to push out a project that didn't go well.
 
IDontBeatGames

IDontBeatGames

ThreadMarksman
Member
Oct 29, 2017
16,483
New York
Normally, I'd understand this type of response from a majority of the publishers/developers we all know and love but this is one of the rare times where I simply can't find it in me to be like "aw alright, I understand". The game shipped in terrible shape, has been notably criticized for its lack of actual fun gameplay and it's just a mess all around. This should've never shipped at all and should've been indefinitely delayed until it was at least remotely meeting the quality/promise of the pre-alpha stuff as people have pointed out. The whole "it's nice to see them do this or do that" stuff goes out the window in this specific case. No matter the improvements or content drop we may see in the future for this game, no one will care cause of how it shipped day one.
 
Socivol

Socivol

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,655
These apologies are always funny because it's not like they don't know the games are coming out a hot mess. They know and still put that shit out so like what are you apologizing for? This turned out exactly how they knew it would. When this was a rare thing it was easier to take but now we are getting at least one "apology" a month at this point.
 
Coolduderedux

Coolduderedux

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,464
selfnoise said:
Cyberpunk was really a trendsetter in the "Twitter pic apology on videogame letterhead" thing. I wonder if they have the letterhead ready to go beforehand.
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I'd like to imagine that there's a team that works on day 1 and day 7 patches while the marketing and graphic design team is working on apology templates with just about every game release these days.


Yes, I'm being sarcastic but i've personally been burned by several games this generation. So my tolerance for dev apologies is pretty thin.
 
eraFROMAN

eraFROMAN

One Winged Slayer
Member
Mar 12, 2019
2,874
This is one of those times where they should have silently moved on to the next one; its way too late to fix now without just making a whole new game
 
Khanimus

Khanimus

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
40,141
Greater Vancouver
I mean... to what end? Like, their games usually aren't of this type or scale, so yeah, they were really stretching themselves going from point-and-click adventure games (I thought State of Mind was really cool) to a stealth/action-ish kind of thing with a big license.

But bug fixes aren't going to fix the conceptual misfire this whole thing is. I hope they learned valuable lessons, I hope a bunch of people got to cut their teeth on something like this if they couldn't have gotten the chance before. But this is an ugly chapter in their track record, and that's just really got to suck.
 
Ashodin

Ashodin

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,593
Durham, NC
image2_1_28.png


I'm waiting
 
etrain911

etrain911

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,803
"We are sorry enough to post an apology template but not enough to offer to refund the people who bought the product so bad we had to apologize for it. "
 
Satoru

Satoru

Member
Jan 4, 2023
627
Turkoop said:
Dude, come on. They totally fucked up. Sold a product that didn't look like the pre alpha footage. Game publishers are fucking us over regularly. Just because they use the "we are sorry" template, we cannot just say "ahhh it's so nice that they see the issues and will work on them". I am sick of these releases.
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well said!
 
Lotus

Lotus

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
105,611
IDontBeatGames said:
Normally, I'd understand this type of response from a majority of the publishers/developers we all know and love but this is one of the rare times where I simply can't find it in me to be like "aw alright, I understand". The game shipped in terrible shape, has been notably criticized for its lack of actual fun gameplay and it's just a mess all around. This should've never shipped at all and should've been indefinitely delayed until it was at least remotely meeting the quality/promise of the pre-alpha stuff as people have pointed out. The whole "it's nice to see them do this or do that" stuff goes out the window in this specific case. No matter the improvements or content drop we may see in the future for this game, no one will care cause of how it shipped day one.
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100% agreed.
 
Nateo

Nateo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,519
Nah fuck these apologies honestly. Its becoming far to common for devs to push out broken ass games and apology to cover there ass.
 
Chaos2Frozen

Chaos2Frozen

Member
Nov 3, 2017
28,017
2023 sure has some of the best games and some of the most broken games ever huh

These are interesting times.
 
Pancracio17

Pancracio17

▲ Legend ▲
Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
18,690
Its clear they werent ready to develop a fully fledged AAA game honestly. Whatever went wrong made the game come out years before it was ready.
 
Roshin

Roshin

Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,840
Sweden
There are bugs and technical issues? You don't like playing as Gollum? It's a complete surprise to us! We had no idea!
 
Nateo

Nateo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,519
These companies need to hit up youtubers they can trade generic ass apology scripts now..
 
fracas

fracas

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,634
The publisher can kick rocks but I feel for the dev team. I understand the final game didn't seem to work out but to commit to such a niche, specific vision of a LOTR game starring fucking gollum of all things... it's gotta be a labor of love in some compacity regardless of the result.

I hope the team's able to chisel out a better representation of what they wanted to make. This is the new internet punching bag so it's gonna be an uphill battle.
 
CupOfDoom

CupOfDoom

Member
Dec 17, 2017
3,098
At the end of the day, this is still a game that costs $50.

At some point in the process studio management should've realized that they were in over their heads with this project and either scrapped it or, delayed it until it was good or, changed the scope of the project to something they could've managed.

I get that these decisions are never easy to make but at the end of the day, its a real bad look to have shipped something in such a bad state.
 
OP
OP
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,367
Ibis Island
Turkoop said:
Dude, come on. They totally fucked up. Sold a product that didn't look like the pre alpha footage. Game publishers are fucking us over regularly. Just because they use the "we are sorry" template, we cannot just say "ahhh it's so nice that they see the issues and will work on them". I am sick of these releases.
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kradical said:
lmao
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While I know it's really easy to want to just drag them, no developer goes out of their way to make a bad game. So yeah, them releasing it as such and expecting people to pay full-price is bad but at the same time the people who truly worked on the game against all deadlines weren't trying to make a bad product. They know at the end of the day how their game is going to fare and if they can actually keep the promise of improving it, that's better than just leaving it as-is and washing their hands clean of it for the people who bought it or were actually looking forward to it.


View: https://twitter.com/Corgiboltz/status/1661810480179019825?s=20
 

kowhite

Member
May 14, 2019
4,374
This game was Daedelic? I've liked some of their stuff but it's usually like lower budget point and click stuff. Did they just bite off more than they can chew here?
 
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