It is reported that Gollum developers used AI to write an apology for the game being poor quality.
May saw Daedalic Entertainment’s The Lord of the Rings: Gollum released, which did not receive a favourable reception. So much so that its developers took to social media in an apology that may or may not have been written by ChatGPT.
Daedalic Studios was left reeling by The Lord of the Rings: Gollum as Daedalic had to shutter shortly after launch due to poor reviews and disappointing gameplay, earning itself an “overwhelmingly negative” review score on Steam and becoming 2023’s worst-reviewed title thus far. Boasting repetitive gameplay without Tolkien flair and numerous bugs and performance issues, developers had no option but to issue an apology for these flaws in development.
Suspicion first surfaced with the apology issued on 26 May when readers noted numerous spelling and grammatical errors (including calling their game “The Lord of Ring”). Thanks to YouTube channel Game Two’s video entitled ‘Why Gollum HAD to fail”, more is known about this story.
This video, in German but with automatic translation available via YouTube’s auto-translate tool, gives a fascinating in-depth exploration into the game’s development process with interviews of its developers who revealed that publisher Nacon composed and delivered their apology in their place; Game Two claimed anonymous sources informed him otherwise citing evidence proving ChatGPT wrote it instead and wasn’t double checked before its publishing.
At the time of this writing, Nacon had yet to confirm if their claims are accurate, but such would account for all errors in its apology letter. Gollum may take another blow again,, but at least his legacy will endure in history…albeit for all the wrong reasons!
