Following the less-than-optimal release of The Lord of The Rings: Gollum, its developer Daedaelic Entertainment is quitting the development side of the business.
According to a report by German website Games Wirtschaft, the Hamburg-based studio will now focus exclusively on publishing, describing this as a "difficult turning point" but "a new beginning in the long history of Daedalic Entertainment."
Unfortunately, this means that 25 of the company's 90 employees were let go, albeit the studio pledges to support them in finding new jobs.
Daedaelic had been working on another The Lord of the Rings game, and work on that has been halted. On the other hand, the new survival game based on the studio's long-running Deponia series, Surviving Deponia (revealed at the Future Games Show) is being developed externally by AtomicTorch, so it won't be affected.
A few months ago, Daedaelic released The Lord of The Rings: Gollum to fairly unflattering reviews, with our own Brittany Alva calling it "an experience that didn't do Gollum's character justice" in her review.
The quality of the game at launch prompted the studio to publish a public apology for the "underwhelming experience," also promising patches to fix some of the issues. The game is currently available for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch version coming down the line.
Daedaelic Entertainment was founded in 2007 and it was recently acquired by Nacon in 2022.
