Gollum developers apologize for the game’s “underwhelming experience”

The developers behind The Lord of the Rings: Gollum have posted an apology after critics and players alike slammed the title for lackluster gameplay, unrefined graphics, and overall bugginess. In a message posted to Twitter and Steam, Daedalic Entertainment says it’s sorry for the game’s “underwhelming experience.”

“We acknowledge and deeply regret that the game did not meet the expectations we set for ourselves or for our dedicated community,” the message reads. “We genuinely value your feedback and have been actively listening to your voices, reading your comments, and analyzing the constructive criticism and suggestions you have provided.”

The studio adds that it has been working on fixes for some of the bugs and performance issues players experienced and says it will keep users updated on its progress.

Gollum, which is set during the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, is an action-adventure game for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC. (It’s set to come to Nintendo Switch later this year.) During the game, you take control of Gollum and his two personalities as you attempt to sneak around orcs and escape Mordor. Unfortunately, it didn’t take very long for negative reviews to start flooding in following its release on Thursday.

While Polygon writes the game sorely lacked personality, GameSpot notes it crashed over 120 times in 11 hours of playtime, and IGN says it’s simply “not fun to play.” The PC version of the game currently has a rating of 41 on Metacritic and a “Mostly Negative” reception on Steam. With this in mind, it’s not clear how much the game’s developers can do to actually fix the game, aside from getting any performance issues sorted out.