20 Disastrous Gaming Launches Everyone Saw Coming

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was a giant, bleating red flag from the moment it was first announced. 

For one, developer Daedalic Entertainment had no experience working in the AAA arena, gameplay previews looked immensely rough, and fundamentally there just wasn't much fan interest in a stealth-action Lord of the Rings game centered around Gollum.

This was all topped off by reviews being embargoed until release day, at which point the avalanche of negativity began, with critics and players alike lambasting the game for its dated stealth gameplay, abundance of glitches, poor AI, naff graphics, and so on.

Even for the low standards of licensed video games Gollum was an utter atrocity, and enough players gave it a wide berth that it predictably flopped, causing a sequel to be cancelled and Daedalic to revert to being a publisher-only.

And then there's the hilariously inane cherry on top of all of this - even when Daedalic apologised to players for the launch state of the game, the apology was revealed to have been written by ChatGPT. You couldn't make it up.