8 Video Games So Bad They KILLED The Studio
2. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is one of the most atrocious licensed video games of the last decade, if not ever.
It was painfully clear that developer Daedalic Entertainment - best known for acclaimed adventure games like Deponia and The Night of the Rabbit - had bitten off more than they could chew with a supposedly AAA stealth-action Lord of the Rings spin-off.
Gollum was near-universally panned for its dated, frustrating gameplay, overabundance of glitches, hilariously naff graphics, and almost every other aspect of its production.
Reports soon enough emerged that Daedalic's employees had been subject to poor working conditions throughout development, and to make matters worse, an apology for the launch state of the game was later revealed to have been written by ChatGPT.
Gollum unsurprisingly sold poorly, leading to the cancellation of a planned sequel and causing Daedalic to shutter as a developer, returning to a publisher-only business model barely a month after the game's release.