Daedalic is a German studio, which is mainly known for point-and-click adventures. Their attempt to develop a Gollum game with the Lord of the Rings license failed miserably and the game was a huge flop. Now the studio is closing its development department.
Who is Daedalic Entertainment? Daedalic is a Hamburg-based studio that became famous for point-and-click adventures like Edna bricht aus or Deponia.
This year saw the release of a huge blockbuster in the form of Gollum. A 3D action-adventure in the Lord of the Rings universe. The game was released on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
What happened? Instead of being a huge success, the game disappointed and had a catastrophic launch. Both from a technical and gameplay perspective, the game did not convince. A tough release considering how big the license is. It was so bad that Daedalic even apologized:
At least one player is having a lot of fun with the game:
Daedalic closes its development department
What happens now? Daedalic will stop developing games themselves and will focus only on publishing other games. Games like Unrailed or Shadow Tactics belong to their publishing portfolio.
As GamesWirtschaft reports, 25 of the 90 employees will lose their jobs. The second game in the Lord of the Rings universe will also be canceled. The survival spinoff Surviving Deponia will be released normally, as it is not developed by Daedalic.
For the German gaming market, this is of course a hard blow, as one of the larger German developers is lost with Daedalic. In the indie sector, however, German developers are achieving success:
