The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum Dev Apologises For Issues & Is 'Committed' To Patching The Game On Xbox

I've never had any interest in this but I do hope it burns to the ground. In general publishers need to be shown that they can't push out turds, demand full price and will eventually actually finish the product. Only way this will happen is if you don't give them your money. So please folks who buy games, don't pre-order stuff, only buy it once it's actually released and in a finished state. Turdfall also deserves the same fate so they don't do that again at Xbox.

oh well.. I'm sorry it's unacceptable at all !
Can you imagine saying this to your boss "Sorry boss , my work isn't good enough, but I promise... i will try to get better !!"
you get fired . POINT.

Shouldn't have released it, then.

The character model doesn't even look like Gollum. It's Gollum's inbred brother who's addicted to meth and cocaine.

This is a prime example not to buy a game without checking reviews first, unless it is a publisher that has a good track recorded.

@Kaloudz I had to Google the William Birkin reference lol
Not having played any of the RE games …
After all this CMA/ABK drama I’m starting to look like Gollum myself…

@Kaloudz ''It proper looks like the love child of Gollum and William Birkin's shoulder''

That somehow escaped the lab it was created in and ended up living in the most radioactive part of Chernobyl. I think we described the background lore of Gollum's inbred brother 🤣 🤣

The game arrived today as I rented it but I don't know if can be bothered to even try it after all I've read and seen.

Nothing precious about this.

Look, I know time is money with regards to game development and deadlines, but publishers and developers really do need to make sure games are "complete" before releasing.

This game is tarnished and probably will have zero ROI no matter how many patches are released from now until then.

Sure, the gameplay loop may have still dragged down the game, but the added frustration of poor performance and bugs can really make a good game into a poor game. By that point, the damage is done.

In the grand scheme of things, does it cost more money to release an unfinished product and patch something no one wants due to bad word of mouth, or release a "finished" game that may not be everyone's cup of tea, but more people may want it?

The ole' "game isn't ready" routine.

When did this become acceptable?

Gollumpunk: 3017

I hate seeing government get mixed up in any industry, government does little but drive up costs, reduce competition, and generally be a nuisance for everyone. But we're getting to the point that I think we're starting to need a video game equivalent of a "lemon law" to prevent what is now industry standard of knowingly selling unfinished broken products to consumers. If the industry won't regulate itself, and consumers are too indiscriminate to reject what's little more than scammers, then governments actually do need to step in.

I'm just happy that I was able to cancel my pre-order of this game 2 days ago and get a full refund. I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan and i wanted to like this game so much, but after seeing the reviews and watching the actual gameplay, i have to say that it looks like a pile of garbage.

A real shame, I think the base concept of a Gollum game could have led to something interesting, but clearly they didn't execute well at all. I guess they'll stop talking of redfall now at least.

Can they patch in fun?

@Kaloudz Too right. It proper looks like the love child of Gollum and William Birkin's shoulder.

That is the best thing I've read all year.

@johndoe89 the boss should be fired too in that case. buck stops with them

@G1lbo the way the world works is that they probably all got bonuses for shipping the product out in time and on budget….

@NEStalgia too right ! One good thing about digital software - they didn’t have to dump all the unsold disks into landfill…

Zero sympathy. They apologize for BUGS. Not the fact that the game is a design disaster from top to bottom, serving a LotR story that no one wanted, crafted in a way that not a single fan of Tolkien understands the point of, with nightmare controls and idiotic gameplay. On top of that, they ask for AAA price for the game, hiding elements like lore and Elven voices behind a "Precious edition" for extra bucks, and, they have already gotten 2 million euros from the German government to follow this up with yet another game set loosely in the LotR universe. They should be utterly ashamed of themselves. This "apology for the bad state of the game" and promise to fix bugs just get me more agitated. Go bankrupt and stop releasing garbage for all I care.

You can patch out bugs, glitches, or bad mechanics. You can't patch a bad game or concept.

@Solidchief I thought that's what was already wrong with Gollum. So I guess this is his crackhead brother that he got addicted and paid him in crack to goto work for him and hoped nobody would notice. Everyone did!!! The moral of the story is don't smoke crack, see what happens when you smoke crack. Ssshhiiittyyy games get released.

@Solidchief I think Gollum's mother banged her UncleBrotherCousin and Gollum is what came out.

@Exerion76 I disagree, I have polished many a turd. Of course resin was involved, but still.

I think I'm done getting my hopes up for anything for a while. I'm not even planning on getting the next hardware upgrade, unless it will benefit the content I already have. I have more than enough to entertain me forever I guess. So I'm not even going to worry about it anymore. It's just so disappointing that this is the new normal and it's going to crash the gaming industry. I refuse to participate in any of this nonsense. I already rarely buy games new and this is one of the reasons, but most of the reason is to save money and I only buy games that are awesome. We live in a time with awesome hardware and software capabilities and tons of creative people that spend their life learning how to do this. The greedy corporations are ruining it all. We should be seeing masterpiece after masterpiece after masterpiece with all of the technology and creative people that we have available. This should be the best time gaming has ever seen and it is the complete opposite. It makes me very sad, I'm going to go cry now.

AAA game is a mess on day one!? Who would have ever thought that would happen again? And again, and again? If I buy a product, whether it be food, a car, a stereo or a game... If it doesn't deliver as promised, I expect a full refund. And until game developers are forced into this, it will continue to happen.
In a way, it's also all those, "I must have this on day one!" gamers fault too. The last 2 or 3 years have shown, if you buy a game day one, you're most likely going to be paying for crap. Despite the red flags waving in your faces for 2 or 3 years, you all still pay ridiculous day one/pre order prices for a game.... And get what everyone with a bit of patience knew you'd get.... Crap. If we stop buying day one, maybe Devs will actually stop and ponder why. But, while they make tonnes of cash from people that are so desperate to buy their half baked product... Why would they change? You can't possibly think that they didn't know it was awful before releasing it, surely?
It's actually borderline theft. Maybe the CMA and other consumer groups need to focus on that. Rather than make wrong decisions about mergers.

The game should be pulled from xbox, playstation and steam store and only allowed back when the game is actually complete and in a working order

When a current-gen Gollum game was revealed, I was happy. Then this happened.

@NEStalgia That's crazy. What needs to be done is force publishers and digital stores owners to accept refund requests in every case with some limitations. Nintendo and Sony don't grant any refunds the last time I checked except perhaps exceptional cases such as Cyberpunk on PS4 and that's illegal in EU and UK. Nintendo didn't even refund digital pre-orders until recently!! They made stupid claims like the customers accepted being abused before abusing them (using an euphemism). Cute Mario's owner is like that (you already know). Microsoft grants refunds but for one week or so after purchase and with very little play time, like Steam. Better than nothing. To refund physical games is tricky because they become "used" like BDs and CDs so I don't know what the solution can be with physical games but they're probably bound to disappear anyway.

@BobCoffee Frankly , the gaming industry doesn't make sense.
Thousand of games are launched every year... how many will have some success? i can't understand especially AAA companies : why launching an "unfinished" product.. on time ? What about the "image" of the studio ? Arkane was a pretty "OK" company before Redfall... now...
The consequence is easy to understand for them :
NO PRE ORDER ! Worst ! : those studios are ready to sell roughly at 100 euros "special - premium - edition" to consumer for... an unfinished game. They have no shame !

@Omnimog They are apologising for the bugs to divert attention. They know that people check Metacritic and they hope that those people think that the low score is because of the bugs that they are promising to fix. So it's an apology with dark intentions. Many European countries fund rubbish games as if they were art. It's sad.

Another game, like Redfall, that should never been allowed to reach the hands of the public.

@ZYDIO I feel bad for Gollums brother

@Banjo- If I buy a disc based game and it is junk or I am completely disappointed with it, I return it and when they say they can't return it because it's opened, I just say that I do not agree with the terms of service and I had to open it to be able to view the terms of service.They are legally required to take my return. So in a way it's a legal way to return opened new games but I don't abuse it.

@ZYDIO I didn't know that. Good for emergencies like this.

This is a game where literally nothing was to my liking (thank goodness for YouTube). I can put up with subpar graphics, but the voice acting, the mechanics and animations, the ending.... It is quite possibly the worst game I've seen in a while, and at that price time I think this level of criticism is not harsh, but due.

Shame, I enjoyed the Shadow games, and even the EA licensed games from the early 2000s, especially The Third Age.