Daedalic is a German studio that is best known for point-and-click adventure. Their attempt to create a Gollum game using the Lord of the Rings license failed miserably and the game was a huge flop. Now the studio is closing their development department.
Who is Daedalic Entertainment? Deadelic is a Hamburg studio, which became famous for point-and-click adventures like Edna breaks out or Deponia.
This year saw the release of a huge blockbuster in the form of Gollum. A 3D action-adventure set in the Lord of the Rings universe. In addition to PC, the game was also released on Xbox and PlayStation.
What happened? Instead of being a huge success, the game disappointed and got off to a disastrous start. From a technical as well as a playful point of view, the game was not convincing. A tough release considering how big the license is. It was so bad that Daedelic even apologized:
Steam, PS5: The biggest game from Germany appears after 4 years – flops so badly that the studio has to apologize
But at least one player really enjoys the game:
Lord of the Rings: Gollum was received badly – HandOfBlood plays it anyway, tries really hard, even plays in cosplay
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Daedelic closes its development department
What’s happening now? Daedelic will now stop developing games itself and will therefore only focus on publishing other games. Games like Unrailed or Shadow Tactics are part of their publishing portfolio.
As reported by GamesWirtschaft, 25 of the 90 employees will lose their jobs. The second game in the Lord of the Rings universe is also set. However, the survival spinoff Surviving Deponia will appear normal as it is not developed by Daedelic.
This is of course a hard blow for the German games market, since with Daedelic you lose one of the larger German developers. In the indie area, on the other hand, German developers are celebrating successes:
Germany supports RPG that scores 91% on Steam with €100,000 – €120,000 goes to game with 68%