Lord of the Rings: Gollum took 5 years to develop, eventually becoming the worst game of 2023

Lord of the Rings: Gollum was one of the worst rated games to debut this year. Although it felt a bit low at the time of the first release and there were many bugs, this could not be attributed to the lack of development time. Sources point out that Lord of the Rings: Gollum has actually been in development for close to 5 years.

Twitter user Timur222 shared a screenshot of the LinkedIn resume of Martin Wilkes, senior game designer at Lord of the Rings: Gollum developer Daedalic Entertainment. The resume shows that Wilkes has been the lead designer of Lord of the Rings: Gollum since 2018.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum has been criticized for its core mechanics. Although some believe that the game brings unique ideas, it fails to realize the full potential of those ideas. In addition, there are many bugs in the game. Many players have reported that the latest version of Lord of the Rings: Gollum has bugs that disrupt the game experience, resulting in players being unable to complete the story.

As a result, many players are surprised that Lord of the Rings: Gollum took five years to develop. Game development often undergoes multiple shifts in direction. This can lead to problems when game development restarts, forcing developers to start from scratch after a long time in the project.

Due to the poor response, Daedalic Entertainment released an apology and promised to fix the game in a future update. However, this still fails to convince players, as Lord of the Rings: Gollum lost almost all of its players on Steam.

Recently, Xbox executive Matt Booty also admitted that the development time of games is getting longer, and a triple-A game does take 4-6 years to develop.