Remember Lord of the Rings: Gollum? Probably because it was one of the major disappointments of the year in terms of game launches. We can’t say he’s the worst of them all, because the competition is very close in 2023, with several starts that should pale in shame. But we can confirm that it is in the top three of the shame of others for the year, which could reserve us some more surprises in this sense (and no, no, I’m not pointing at Skull Island: Rise of Kong…) .

We are only a few cases away from the institutionalization of a mandatory statement of apology after starting a new one fiasco the game or better yet the someone a miserable predator and scavenger the director comes up with a great idea to release it, yes, but as DLC: «Do you want us to apologize for selling you a… chestnut? Of course, good player, just pay €0.99 as an in-app purchase to download a PDF of our deepest apology.»

I say this because, believe it or not, writing an apology statement must be terribly difficult. Write a text in which you admit LOTR: Gollum is so bad it shouldn’t have happened It must require an expertise in letter writing beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. At the end of the day, we’re talking about a game that marked the end of Daedalics as a developer studio, and I’ll admit that I’m very sad because we’re talking about a studio that signed titles like the sensational Deponia.

A few words from the »Lord of the Rings: Gollum™ team » pic.twitter.com/adPamy5EjO

— Lord of the Rings: Gollum (@GollumGame) May 26, 2023

“We would like to sincerely apologize for the disappointment many of you experienced with The Lord of the Rings: Gollum following its release. We realize and deeply regret that the game did not live up to the expectations we set for ourselves or our dedicated community. Please accept our sincere apologies for any disappointment this may have caused.”

The game editor role was shared by Daedalic herself, along with Nacon, who apparently decided to release the apology statement without prior agreement with Daedalic. This in itself is a problem, but the situation is even more complicated because as we can read in the VGC, Nacon used ChatGPT to write an apology statement for Lord of the Rings: Gollum.

We’re facing one of those cases where one isn’t sure if there are too many words or not, and as that memorable tweet said, we need bigger capital letters. An apology is only valuable if it is sincere., if it comes from within, from acknowledging what was done wrong, right? And how much of it is in the text we ask ChatGPT with simple call? You know it, I know it, and of course they know it too.