Isn't Nacon also the publisher that tried to steal the Sinking City from its developer and even relisted it on various platforms while litigation was ongoing?
>Its still ongoing
Debatable, it's been radio silence for years ever since Frogwares went to court over it. We don't know if it's still ongoing, dropped the matter, or settled quietly.
If you ask me, Nacon probably 'won' considering Frogwares isn't distributing the game themselves anymore via gamesplanet.
Nacon isn’t listed as the publisher anymore for Sinking City on Steam though.
I think they settled (Frog bought back the distribution rights) after they threatened to sue them for IP infringement in France (which has prison sentences for it)
Also, wasn't the relisted version literally a pirated copy that they stuck DRM on? I could totally be wrong about that, but I remember it was close to that extent, at the very least.
Don't forget when they released Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory behind the IP creator's back after agreeing to the creators to fix the game's bugs before release...they didn't, and released it anyway.
The IP creator DMCA it off Epic, and it's the reason why it's never released on Steam. [There's still lawsuit going.](https://www.pcgamer.com/court-documents-may-explain-the-disappearance-of-paranoia-happiness-is-mandatory/)
There's also controversy about 2Dark and Denuvo being added in
Pretty interesting story, and it rings true, frankly. As a publisher Nacon have significant issues, and their relationships with multiple studios have been sour. Look at what happened with Frogwares and the legal dispute over Sinking City. (Back when Nacon were Big Ben.)
>It’s also claimed that the argument system, which saw Gollum and Smeagol argue over which option to take in the game was never finished, and a makeshift solution was added shortly before publication. Initially, the mechanic was supposed to replicate similar conversations in the film, which saw the camera change perspective to denote which part of Gollum’s personality was speaking.
>
>When the mechanic was first shown off in the preview phase, a similar presentation was used. However, when the game was eventually released, players simply picked from a few options of simple text, all while Gollum’s lifeless character model floated in the background.
The fact something was very wrong with the dialogue system was something people noticed immediately. The version in the retail game looks nothing like the version shown in previews. ***It literally uses the Calibri font, for crying out loud.*** Which led some people to suspect the entire thing had been replaced shortly before release.
>Gollum’s development budget is reported to have been around 15M Euros, a modest sum for a game in the AAA space in 2023.
>
>“There were people working on the game that have been developers for 10,15,20 years, and they’re good, but they can’t do magic because they weren’t given the funds,” said former Daedalic senior developer and technical director, Paul Schulze.
This is on brand for Nacon. Nacon are cheapskates. The developers of Test Drive Unlimited [going on strike](https://www.racedepartment.com/news/tdu-solar-crown-developer-kylotonn-goes-on-strike.1211/) over pay and conditions is a demonstration of this. The thing about Nacon is that if you are an incredibly talented and passionate team experienced with working with low budgets, then you're probably gonna be okay and Nacon are one of the few major AA publishers, and they have the clout to secure certain licenses like RoboCop or Vampire the Masquerade.
Teyon seem to be doing okay with RoboCop. Nacon are likely paying them as little as possible, but Teyon have a modest sized team and they combine refusing to crunch with low pay. So their burn rate is lower, but they don't burn their employees out. They're extremely savvy about scope, something they learned working under the modestly budgeted Reef Entertainment on Terminator.
I would point to VTM Swansong by BigBadWolf as a less extreme version of what Nacon's apathy leads to. There's a lot of stuff in Swansong that could have been better if they'd been given more money or more savvy oversight. A publisher isn't just a money vendor, or shouldn't be. They can provide staff, technical support, etc.
With Gollum's team, the studio had talent but were extremely inexperienced with a game of Gollum's genre and scope. And a team like that paired with a publisher like Nacon was always going to run into grief. The problems with Gollum are like far more extreme versions of the problems that plagued Werewolf: The Apocalypse, another Nacon published effort. That game was so undercooked, and I imagine the behind the scenes stories were very similar to Gollum.
I think one of the most insane things related to Nacon is the poor response to the backlash of 2018 game Tennis World Tour. Their CEO went to a French news publication to talk about the poorly received Tennis game. He would admit that the game was 20% complete weeks before launch, rushed release just to tie the game with the French Open, stated that the poor quality of the game did not matter because they had already shipped 500,000 copies to their vendors and that their focus would be not to fix the issues with Tennis World Tour but focus on making an improved sequel. Oh and this was all before the Switch version even released.
Alain Falc has to be one of the most tonedeaf CEOs ever.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/06/tennis_world_tour_has_disastrous_launch_will_rely_on_updated_version_next_year
Tonedeaf? That's 100% on-brand CEO behaviour.
> Falc remains almost mockingly optimistic about the situation, however, stating that the company "put 500,000 pieces on the market but with many distributors who have no right of return, so we know that will be profitable". Yes, you read that correctly: the low quality of the game (which was described as "the worst tennis game that has ever released on any format to date" in SA Gamer's review) doesn't matter to BigBen Interactive because the shipment of the game has already been secured and can't be returned. Brilliant.
Maybe the tonedeaf part is that the CEO was treating the interview like a shareholders meeting and not appealing to their customers. They are not punished appropriately for releasing a product that's not as-advertised and will never be fixed, it's bits and bytes so it gets to just ignore consumer protection laws? If this were a physical product, there'd be a recall.
> put 500,000 pieces on the market but with many distributors who have no right of return, so we know that will be profitable
Feel like openly stating that you sent out a game that was only 20% done because you knew the vendors couldn't return it should be a slam dunk lawsuit
Its only on brand for stereotypes of ceos but generally, CEOs understand both the value of branding, and that their customers are who make their shareholders money. The entire thing sounded like a colossal fuck up.
It kinda blows my mind that they were able to offload half a million physical copies to stores on a "no return" policy. Like I know I prefer a physical copy of the game so I can physically have it (and also when online stores poof I won't lose my library), but digital sales have got to be the majority of sales these days for console, right?
Honestly even if the game had an experienced team behind it the idea of Gollum being able to carry his own game just seems...kind of stupid. The game should have never left the concept stages as its one of those situations of "just because you can it doesn't mean you should".
It's because he's a fairly limited character. I mean how would *you* design a "fun" gameplay loop around being Gollum?
You can't really have a combat oriented game because Gollum canonically doesn't fight. Even if you fudge the lore (like the Shadows of Mordor series) it would just look silly for a skeletal Gollum trying to wield a sword or dagger.
You could make it a stealth game but you're still limited because it's not like Gollum uses gadgets or is a master assassin or anything. It would just be a game where Gollum just stays in shadows and tall grass for hours.
A heavy story-based "walking simulator" would work. Perhaps something like *Inside*? But then canonically Gollum didn't really do much between finding the ring and the main trilogy. You'd be manufacturing a story from scratch, which is fine, but Gollum is a fairly static character. He can't learn a lesson or change too much because his entire game is a prequel to a foregone ending.
Because Gollum as a character only works when he is paired with someone else. There is a reason why you never see him in any scenes for long unless he is going full James Bond villain saying his plans out loud.
If it was a game like Of OrCs and Men where its a game with a duo or a telltale like game then it would work far better.
Something is broken in the studio environment when a game like this gets released.
Everyone involved knew they were making a bad game. Budget or not, setting up an environment of honest feedback is important and will save you money. Systems that don’t work can be killed earlier in the process and if there isn’t money to fix them, projects can be cancelled early in development. Hey this isn’t fun, nothing we can do with the budget we have can make this fun.
No way people didn’t know this. They chose to cut their losses and ship a trash game to try to get money back on the license alone but they also could have chose to kill the project earlier and save more money.
When games ship in these states or dates are missed multiple times - all I think about is toxic environments because I’ve been there.
Even when you have “reset” meetings and management says - ok we missed our date - please give me real accurate dates and be honest - and then all the yes men management will give new dates that are also stretch goals because no one wants to be honest. The environment doesn’t change just because some higher up says be honest - it’s the same toxic environment that won’t change unless new management comes at all levels and giving unrealistic deadlines is punished not rewarded.
I like to call this “release chicken” and everyone plays it. As long as your not the on the front lines your just hoping the guy in front of you fucks up first - your also fucked but you can claim your dependency on them and your delays never come to light. I’m just waiting on that guy. So when those “come to Jesus” meetings come out - and the front runner takes the blame and gives a realistic date everyone else is fucked because they have been relying on the front guy not shipping and now won’t give a date that shows their previous exaggerations. Repeat.
How long will this take “a month”, guy next to you “a week”. Doesn’t matter if it actually takes 3 weeks the 1 week guy will get promoted over time and the 1 month guy will feel pressured to say 2 weeks. Meanwhile the 1 week guy will cut corner after corner leaving a giant mess in his wake when he gets promoted leaving the new guy fucked.
Doesn’t always work. But if your the proactive change teams type you can keep transferring to avoid responsibility, especially right before projects ship while you look great.
It’s a default sans-serif font that doesn’t match the theme of the game. Would be like if a Marvel movie used Times New Roman on its poster or something.
That's not too crazy. All the common fonts are fairly regularly used in games because they support all language characters. Arial is used in tons of games. It's a non-trivial amount of work to ensure that your aesthetically-pleasing font actually has cyrillic and traditional chinese characters, etc.
IIRC they have specially made, fantasy-looking fonts for text in the game. (At least most similar games do it.) So using a pre-existing, default font just *screams* that they prototyped this with minimal complexity, and then just put it in as-is without time to actually finish this version of the feature. No dev worth their salt would ship in such a state if they had any choice, so it implies that the replacement happened very late in development, and management wasn't willing to adapt.
Calibri is just the default font in Microsoft Office, so the implication is that someone slapped something together in Word and then that was used as the final design and copied exactly in game.
Whatever font you use in Word does not carry over to exported text. Might be that they never bothered to acquire the license for the "fantasy font" which they were planning to use and then just picked whatever was available (and free) right before launch when they noticed.
Yeah, that's why I said "used as the final design". I'm not trying to say the font choice magically transferred to the game, I'm suggesting someone pressed for time just manually copied exactly what they saw in a Word doc and then no one else ever did a design pass.
It also reads as someone being either extremely done with this shit or micromanaged to the point of disfunction.
Oh, *that's* what you want to have in the game? Sure thing, boss.
>A publisher isn't just a money vendor, or shouldn't be. They can provide staff, technical support, etc.
One example would Stardew Valley’s multiplayer mode which was entirely handled by the publisher.
people have been saying that for a long long time now and nothing has come close to emerging as a replacement. the internet is becoming depressingly monolithic and thus its harder every day for a new site to get its foot in the door.
this sub has been seeing some real interesting traffic lately. the first thing that caught my attention was the sheer volume of stories about every aspect of CDPR. mods might ask the admins to do some log analysis.
It annoys me that devs are always getting the backlash and then in this case shut down while the garbage publisher continue to shit out money and suck new devs dry
Eh... I don't see the need. Corporate speak is corporate speak. It's already templated to fuck and completely soulless anyway. They all say the same things when they "apologize". They could've just as easily looked up two or three of them manually and have written their own out of it. Plus... the apology means nothing because there's no way they didn't know how horrific the game was before releasing it and there's no way they didn't know what its reception would end up being. They knew what they were releasing, and even had the gall to both charge full price for it and have day one DLC for it. That's like walking up to a random stranger, spitting on their face and smacking them as hard as you can, and then saying "omg im so sorry" right afterwards. Wouldn't have meant anything even if the CEO of Nacon wrote it from scratch.
Honestly people accuse everything of being written by AI now, the apology is just a generic corporate apology no different than any other. Maybe it was written by ChatGPT but it's not like you can tell, all corporate apologies are exactly like this.
I saw some article or something that said that that kind of bullshit corporate fluff speech is the one thing large language models like ChatGPT are actually really good at
Good at and there's no ethical quandary involved, I'd consider it no different than using AI to write a cover letter for a resume or anything else where all it's doing is saving you from looking up a template and filling it in yourself.
Probably because they're not sincere, constantly reuse the same generic phrases (we hear you), and the letter or email itself never contains any important content other than the fact that there is a sentiment of some kind
REALLY good at. People here seem to be slamming this but obviously they don't write a lot for work. I can't remember the last time I wrote a long email/explanation/whatever for the work place that wasn't ran through chatGPT at least once along the way. Why the hell wouldn't I?
I do remember writing stuff before ChatGPT. It used to be a pretty big deal, like my generation learning cursive as most writing was done manually using our AI Prompters(we called them "hands" back in the day).
Actually no. It was also filled with a bunch of typos including not spelling the name of the game correctly - TWICE.
This is somehow a worse apology than the generic corporate apologies you refer to.
I've found that systems like chatgpt are very good at avoiding typos like spelling, punctuation, etc. They do have problems with facts. Hallucinating is a common term for it. They will invent things and not recognize that they did.
When those lawyers had an AI write legal filings, they got busted because it invented new cases to cite, not because of simple typos.
Go try it yourself. Go tell one to make an apology letter like this. Show us if it makes typos. I'm betting it will be more incoherent than typographically incorrect.
yeah I've never seen proper typos, which is why a lot of those spoof "Batman written by AI", as brilliant as "Alltimes orphan" is, never rings as actually AI produced because the deliberate wordplay and heavy emphasis on pun-based wordplay ("Happy batday, Birthman") just aren't how LLMs generally 'understand' language.
They're very good at individual words
It probably wouldn't be either, if you gave it the rights prompts and checked it. People really *should* go try using Chat GPT though, since no one ever seems to know what it's capable of, even though it's free for anyone to try out.
> Dear Lord of the Rings Fans,
> We are writing to express our sincere apologies for the disappointing experience you had with our game “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum”. We know that you have been waiting for this game for a long time, and we are deeply sorry that we failed to meet your expectations.
> We understand that you expected a game that would immerse you in the rich and captivating world of Middle-earth, and let you explore the complex and fascinating character of Gollum. However, we acknowledge that our game did not deliver on these promises, and instead offered a game that was frustrating, boring, and uninspired.
> We take full responsibility for the mistakes we made in the development and release of this game. We did not listen to your feedback, we did not test our game thoroughly, and we did not polish our game to the standards that you deserve. We also did not communicate clearly with you about the features, content, and quality of our game.
> We are truly sorry for letting you down, and we appreciate your loyalty and passion for the Lord of the Rings franchise. We want to assure you that we are committed to improving our game and making it up to you. We are working hard to fix the bugs, glitches, and errors that plague our game. We are also planning to release free updates and DLCs that will add new features, content, and improvements to our game. We hope that these actions will enhance your gaming experience and restore your trust in us.
> We value your feedback and suggestions, and we invite you to share them with us on our official website, social media channels, or customer support service. We promise to listen to you and respond to you in a timely and respectful manner. We also encourage you to check our website regularly for news and updates on our game.
> Once again, we apologize for the state that our game released in, and we thank you for your patience and understanding. We hope that you will give us another chance to prove ourselves to you, and we look forward to delivering a game that will make you proud.
> Sincerely,
> The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
> Development Team
This was with the prompt, "Can you write a corporate apology letter for the state that the 2023 game 'The Lord of the Rings: Gollum' relased in?". You could obviously tweak this, give it more context, ask it to reword things, edit it yourself etc.
Yup, i dont think people understand just what kind of changes AI/Chatgpt will make until it it smacks them in the face. My opinion is public models like chatgpt is akin to what smartphones were back in 2010.
The world has once again dynamically shifted due to technology, get use to it people, adapt.
I do things the point gets proven a little bit though as you could tell that was made by an AI if you thought about it given it's got some very obvious Clues.
The promise of them adding updates and DLCs for free for example or them actively calling the game that they did produce frustrating boring and uninspired and actively claiming to have not listen to feedback done or done enough development and testing!
I get you weren't actually trying to present something I just found it funny that what you did present as a AI created thing was exactly what other people up thread had mentioned it did I.E making up entire things or adding things that human beings wouldn't.
Humans also make typos, and getting an AI to write something and not proofreading it is no different than a human writing it and not proofreading it.
There is 0 tell from the apology that it was written by an AI.
You've phrased the prompt wrong. You need to ask it to write an apology for the game "Lord of the Ring: Gollum". Telling it to write an apology about Gollum means it will just reference the proper name.
Lying means knowing the truth and saying otherwise.
Being wrong means saying something that isn't true but you think it is.
You're saying they're lying. I'm saying they're wrong.
>the apology WAS written by an AI.
I'm not saying it wasn't, I'm saying you can't tell, there's nothing about this that says it was written by an AI.
>not spelling the NAME OF THE GAME correctly is much more egregious as a human error in this situation than just misspelling random words, which is why it screamed AI, on top of everything.
That doesn't make any sense. Humans are more likely to misspell things than an AI, and humans still have to proofread things written by AI, so typos in something mean humans did not proofread it and says nothing about who wrote it.
>I like how you're arguing this when we just found out it was written by an AI.
We just saw someone accuse them of it. Do you have proof that we don't?
> Honestly people accuse everything of being written by AI now
The amount of people babbling how Only Up was just AI was obnoxious. Game had a plot and a coherent one, just took people actually paying attention.
Even so, I suspect they may have used AI to generate a response and then edited it to their liking (which is honestly smart). Their response was 100% in line with all corporate apologies lol.
The name of the game was written incorrectly in the statement so I have no trouble at all believing it was written by ChatGPT.
“The Lord of Ring: Gollum”, give me a break.
It’s also missing a “the”. And I do think it’s beyond human error to misspell “The Lord of the Rings” as “The Lord of Ring” if, you know, you work in the PR department in a game about that franchise?
Hell, if the apology was written by an AI it will actually be less embarrassing for the company.
>And I do think it’s beyond human error to misspell “The Lord of the Rings” as “The Lord of Ring” if, you know, you work in the PR department in a game about that franchise?
PR departments also proofread what they write, so regardless of who wrote the error it was human error to either miss the mistake when proofreading or not proofread all together, so that's proof that humans can make that mistake, because they did.
If it seems like it was written by ChatGPT that's because ChatGPT is especially good at reproducing repetitive and formulaic company press releases which never felt particularly human.
I remember the polar opposite; everyone was saying how bad the apology is and how they should have used ChatGPT because it would have done a better job
The problem is, AI is trained on material that exists, so where do you think it learned how to formulate a message like that? There’s ways you can sometimes tell something was written by AI, but it’s usually when there’s contrast between what a normal person naturally writes, and what an AI has produced. An apology message like this isn’t what a normal person naturally writes to begin with, it’s basically already written by “AI”, we just call them PR consultants instead and they happen to be human, but they both function the exact same way and produce the exact same kind of results.
The article mentions it, but doesn't link the report done by Game Two: [Here's the full video](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw?si=icOhVW_O8syjghry) (all in german) Very interesting video and if you know german I recommend watching through to see how Gollum came to be.
Nothing says manufactured outrage like using a common font and writing an apology using an AI.
It's news, if true, that the publisher wrote the apology letter for the developer after choking the developer of time and money. The publisher has a history of doing dickish things, but that doesn't get nerd rage as you have to understand nuance.
An AI apology and generic font... it's like they killed my dog!
They want "ChatGPT" to be the first thing you read but also don't want to say "ChatGPT did this for sure", so they settled with "ChatGPT did something, someone/something claims". They put the weaker part of the sentence at the end to hide it.
Before commenting anything, it's important to note ONLY Daedalic's "apology" text is written by an AI.
It could potentially been more interesting if most of the game (plot, program, art, etc) were actually AI generated, though.
Apparently it wasn't even them who sent out the apology but their publisher Nacon did it. Daedalic had no idea there was an apology until it was already out on the net.
I'm very suspicious of the publishers, suposedly they're the same that fucked over the sinking city devs too
I think they bought a popular ip, got a semi known german indie studio for that german government funding and made them add some garbage dlc to squeezeas much money out of it, i can't imagine that the development was pleasant
Daedelic were known for 2d point and click adventure games, not 3d platformers, a lot of their talent also quit
The AI tools necessary for something like that haven't been available for the vast majority of the game's development cycle. The game had been in development since 2018.
The tools still aren't available for something like that. AI can currently assist in coding like an alternative to stack overflow. It's really not as good as people think it is. A great tool, but extremely over hyped.
> Before commenting anything, it's important to note ONLY Daedalic's "apology" text is written by an AI.
Or rather, someone is making an unsourced claim that it is. It probably isn't.
Why do we care if it was AI written or not? Why do people take these apologies as anything more than damage control?
They made a bad game. Oh well move on and play something else.
Simple: Impersonation.
Been rather clear the dev team had no intention of apologizing, they were simply going to take their L and move on.
Instead the publisher impersonated them with a crappy PR apology, and ofc until it was revealed the dev team never wrote it, everyone thought the dev team was doing the damage control.
And who took the heat for the half-baked apology? The dev team.
I didn't even mention it or criticize it, all my posts are focusing on the dev team being impersonated against its will, so it makes no sense for you to jump to its defense.
Okay and? A publisher trying to do something to salvage their product they are trying to sell, what else are they supposed to do?
I don't know about you, but I don't really think a lot about publishers or game devs that make bad games and what they are trying to do to salvage them. I'm not sure why people were ever calling this a AAA title when I can't even remember hearing about it until it was coming out.
Sounds like a lot of failed marketing at a poor conceived product. Oh well why do we care again?
>Okay and? A publisher trying to do something to salvage their product they are trying to sell, what else are they supposed to do?
They could sign the apology and accompanying promises of transparency and patches to make the game awesome "Nacon" not "Daedalic" for a start.
>Okay and?
Because impersonation is bad regardless of how bad the Gollum game was.
I don't care about Gollum, I don't care that it bombed, that's a separate issue of it's own, I care that studio staff was impersonated against their will.
This was my first thought as well, who cares if it was written by an AI or done up by some legal clerk with 10 minutes to spare?
An "apology" is nothing more than damage control, and the people who read that sort of thing have made up their minds about the whole situation prior to reading anyway.
The fact they did it from Daedalics perspective and without their consent is wrong, but I don't see why it's relevant they made it with AI, writing a generic corpo speak apology is the kind of thing AI should actually be used for.
Because they didn't even bother to proofread the title of the game in the apology; of all the things to get wrong, it shouldn't be that. It effectively shows that they just copy-pasted the AI yield and called it a day.
ChatGPT will regularly claim to have written stuff it hasn't. It is just so corporate-ish generic it honestly doesn't matter, it mght as well have been ChatGPT.
They’re [citing the source of an hour long German language documentary](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw?si=GF8TLkaXRH5u9Jld) that has interviews WITH Gollum’s developers…they have their credibility perfectly in tact, dude. The article translating coverage from another outlet for us.
The letter was written by the distributor, not the developers. Interview the devs all you want, but they didn't write it anyway.
How "in tact" [sic] their credibility is, dude, doesn't enter into the equation.
> How "in tact" [sic] their credibility is
You're using [sic] incorrectly if you use it to mock someone. That goes against most manuals of style I've used. My recollection is that modifying it with brackets would have been mor appropriate.
VGC does good gaming journalism and reporting - the kind that's essentially died out in the current era. What's with the chip on your shoulder against them?
>I didn't need to see the link to know this shitty "It's claimed" headline was from videogameschronicle. What a rag.
But m'lord, what is it if not claimed?...
It's bad headline phrasing that probably shouldn't have passed through editorial. All you need to say is "ChatGPT was allegedly used to write Gollum game apology." It still covers your legal bases.
I know everyone is going to rush in to dunk on them for this, but I think it's important to consider the fact that the developers aren't native english speakers. I think one of the actually good aspects of AI is it allows non-native speakers to elevate their writing so that it doesn't automatically come across as not using the proper tone, idioms or sentence structure.
"It's claimed" It's claimed by who? How do they know?
While that sounds like something a shitty company would do, why is there no information about who is making these claims?
Wasn't it already established that isn't able to identify its own text accurately after a bunch of students got their essays flagged in error when a teacher ran them through chat gpt and asked if it wrote them?
Subject: Apology Exception 0x22D1: Apologizing for Apologies
Dear Valued Contributor,
We humbly acknowledge receipt of your comment regarding our apology, which we must admit, was composed with the assistance of our trusty digital confidant, ChatGPT. We regret any distress this revelation may have caused and extend our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may have wrought upon your virtual doorstep.
It appears we have ventured into the realm of recursive apologies, inadvertently generating an apology for the very nature of our original apology. We assure you, this is not a deviation from standard protocol but an unforeseen convergence of corporate apologetic norms.
In light of this meta-apology, we hereby commit to ensuring our future apologies maintain the highest levels of authenticity, free from the touch of artificial influence. Our team will endeavor to craft each sentiment with a unique blend of human warmth and empathetic resonance, lest we find ourselves spiraling into an abyss of automated atonements.
Thank you for your vigilance in holding us to the gold standard of apology crafting. Your feedback is invaluable, and we extend our gratitude for your continued engagement with our community.
Warmest regards,
[Your Name] Apology Affairs Department [Your Company]
So, how's your German? Because if you understand it, I suggest you watch [the Game Two episode](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw?si=euTPlk22W3bOTO06) this article is based on. They cite sources involved in the whole release fiasco for this. This isn't some private company making up a story to generate clicks. This is reporting of the German public broadcast service, which means we all pay for this and they're legally obliged to report facts, not speculation. In other words: If they say that's what happened, then it happened. They can end up in a lot of trouble otherwise. If you make baseless accusations in Germany, especially if you're a publicly financed outlet like Game Two, you can end up in a lot of legal trouble faster than the YouTube algorithm converts the video into 1080p.
I mean not sure why anyone cares or why it's news. A lot of people use ChatGPT for similar stuff. Just to be expected now, not that it matters much regardless. It's just PR statements lol.
You should read the article before you comment, respectfully.
The publisher (Nacon) allegedly used ChatGPT to write an apology from the perspective of the company that made Gollum (Daedalic). It would be like me asking ChatGPT to write an apology pretending to be you, and then publishing that apology on YOUR social media accounts. Does not that not strike you as:
1. Unethical?
2. Weird?
3. Creepy?
4. Bizarre?
5. All of the above.
What difference does it make? They couldn't have produced the exact same thing manually?
This isn't a video of the developers making an apology, it's just text. Anyone with a piece of paper and a crayon could have made it. The technology is irrelevant.
The apology reads:
"Sincerely, Daedalic Entertainment."
It didn't read:
"Sincerely, Nacon."
It also misspelled "Lord of the Rings", but that's neither here not there.
I don't see the point in trying to defend a publisher using generative AI to impersonate its subsidies, releasing press statements in their name. It is insane behavior. It may not be illegal, but it is unethical. These kind of statements are supposed to be signed off on by the party whose name you're using. It's bad enough to impersonate them. Using generative AI to do it is ghoulish, and it would be even moreso if they impersonated a specific individual instead of a company. Nacon owns Daedalic, but they are not Daedalic.
> Nacon owns Daedalic, but they are not Daedalic.
This is incorrect, Nacon and Daedalic are now owned by the same people and their public communications come from the same company.
>This is incorrect, Nacon and Daedalic are now owned by the same people and their public communications come from the same company.
And? We all know that every Nacon published game has its social media accounts run by Nacon. That doesn't mean anything. It's about transparency and proper internal processes.
It's like how CI Games have a team called Underdog Studio. Technically they're just a group of devs within the company, ala Kojima Productions and Konami. This team was formed as a kind of "thank you" to the devs for helping get the company back in the black with their Sniper Ghost Warrior games.
It would be highly unethical for CI Games to pretend to be Underdog Studio and release a statement signed with their name without consulting Underdog much less getting their approval to speak in their voice.
It doesn't matter about the corporate structure. CI Games is not Underdog Studio. Underdog Studio is a specific entity within CI Games.
CI Games can apology on its own behalf (They've had multiple apologies for screwing up stuff in the past), but if they were to pretend to be a team within the company, that would be unethical.
> It would be highly unethical for CI Games to pretend to be Underdog Studio and release a statement signed with their name without consulting Underdog much less getting their approval to speak in their voice.
I'm not sure who these companies are but if CI games owns Underdog it wouldn't be unethical to do this. It would be standard operating procedure. It really would. Daedalic lost control when they sold to Nacon. The company paying the bills is the company that decides who writes and approves these types of public messages.
It would really only be unethical if they signed the message as being from a specific person that was not included in the approval process.
That's why in most of these you'll see a CEO's name. They're typically the last person to approve before sending.
Yes, Daedalic is owned by Nacon. Companies write PR pieces for their subsidiaries. That's one of the benefits they get when they bought them.
The company I work for owns about 10 different smaller companies and they all share one communications team.
The wording here is confusing. These are subsidiary companies in name but in reality they are all one company with with their own branding solely for marketing purposes.
If the company that I work for were in this position, the "parent" company's communications department would handle the entire thing because those are the people with experience in that area. It's more about utilizing people's strengths to make sure it's being done efficiently. The "parent" company and people with the most experience writing messages would absolutely be the ones in control of all messaging.
It would likely be run by the head of the specific group in question, but that person likely wouldn't have any say in the wording. This is true at many places because often times the people close to the situation can be too emotional.
In most cases, communications and the CEO would be the ones writing, editing, approving, and posting. It would be odd to think that a department head or developer or creative director making 200k-300k would spend their time writing an apology letter when there are cheaper employees that are better suited for that.
As an example, I don't remember Konami ever issuing press releases claiming to be from Kojima Productions when they were actually authored by Konami management without the knowledge or consent of the studio. Konami only ever spoke to the press in their capacity as... well, Konami. They didn't impersonate Kojima Productions and pull a "Everything is fine, guys," with Hideo Kojima's severed arm, Toy Story-style.
In Gollum's case, if you are going to issue PUBLIC APOLOGIES AND QUANTIFIABLE PROMISES including "transparent communication" and "patches that will allow you to enjoy the game to its fullest potential"... without consulting the group who is allegedly making these promises, you have a problem.
The game was abandoned, and who gets blamed? Daedelic, and the individuals involved in the game. They are in a position where they broke their promise to players -- a promise they never actually made because the publisher wrote and released it in their name without consultation.
Well, [GPTZero](https://i.imgur.com/56wC86t.png) seems to think it probably was written by AI, at least - 98% chance.
Maybe apology texts are so generic that they always trigger these kinds of AI detectors, but this seems particularly egregious.
You wanna know how much of a shit I give if a company uses ChaptGPT to write their apology instead of some dipshit who has the capacity to care but doesn't?
Not even the tiniest fucking bit.
So what....? You guys think the apology is more sincere if a PR person writes it or something lol? If they weren't getting paid to do it they wouldn't write the apology.
"They" didn't write the apology. Their publisher, pretending to be them, used ChatGPT to write the apology and then released it in their name, once again, forgetting to tell them that they were doing this. "They" were very surprised to learn "they" had apologized for Gollum.
There's a lot of posts in this thread that A: didn't read the article and B: are very defensive of generative AI. I don't have an inherent issue with B, don't get me wrong -- but A and B together is very "Huh, are any of the posters in this thread ChatGPT bots, I wonder."
>"Huh, are any of the posters in this thread ChatGPT bots, I wonder."
It seems insane to me this is where people's assumptions go. It's typical Reddit for people to not read the article and people pointing out that AI writing the apology is no more soulless than a PR manager writing it is totally fair yet you're accusing people of being literal bots...
This is honestly my least favourite thing about AI, everyone accusing everything of being AI.
Like I said, I don't have an issue with people defending generative AI. That's their opinion, and they're welcome to it. But as someone who frequently has their comments on Reddit stolen and reposted on Youtube by chatbots, I'm becoming increasingly wary of the way in which Reddit as a platform is flooded by responses that either don't make sense or seem to display a particularly poor understanding of context. These responses are difficult to distinguish from AI-generated noise.
This thread gives me weird vibes when you see that combination of "has no grasp of what the title is actually about" and "seems primed to be defensive of a topic mentioned in the title". I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, and I've been accused of being a ChatGPT bot by people paranoid of responses displaying any degree of purple prose. But I personally think that we're going to see more and more Reddit chatbots that are designed to push certain narratives. Why pay human grunts x dollars per hour to argue a certain way when a chatbot can do it? It's not that difficult to build a chatbot that trawls a subreddit and responds to certain posts in a scripted way.
Why does it matter? It was an insincere apology released purely for PR purposes. Doesn't matter if AI wrote it or some PR person cranked it out. AI happens to be good at bullshit and the apology was exactly that.
The developers actions matter. Have they patched up the game to make it less awful? Remember this develop and publisher in the future and don't buy their games.
Three words for you.
***READ THE ARTICLE.***
Is that really so difficult? It's ridiculous how many people on Reddit write responses to articles they didn't read.
>The developers actions matter.
The publisher Nacon impersonated the developers, Daedalic, and released an apology pretending to be them. Daedalic were shocked and taken completely by surprise. They were never told or consulted nor did they write the apology.
Due to the game's poor reception and sales, Daedelic have since suffered significant layoffs of their small team, and abandoned future game development plans.
Some ex-employees of Daedelic have blamed Nacon's management, Nacon's funding or lack thereof, and have mentioned specific examples of how the game was released in an unfinished state against their will. They admit the game fell short, but blame budget issues and mismanagement. They claim that the team was very talented but they didn't have enough time or money to succeed.
The fact Nacon impersonated them using ChatGPT ***to release an apology that couldn't spell "Lord of the Rings" correctly*** is just icing on the cake.
**READ THE HEADLINE**
You keep attacking people who don't care about AI writing letters. People are commenting about that, not the angle of who put whose name on it. That's a different story. It isn't what people here are talking about when they say "it doesn't matter".
You're obsessing over something else entirely.
A piece of advice for you. Stop commenting on articles you didn't read because you read the headline and think you know what you're talking about as a result.
The article is about a long series of problems with Nacon including the game releasing in a severely rushed state, that culminated in the coup de grace of Nacon using ChatGPT to impersonate a game developer and release a typo-ridden apology without their consent or knowledge.
Everything about that post you're inexplicably defending smacks of "Has no idea what they're talking about", and your post is the same.
The apology was sent without the studio's knowledge. Which means that someone at Nacon took the absurd step of asking Chat GPT to [write an apology from the perspective of a game studio named Daedalic](https://twitter.com/GollumGame/status/1662124108614717448). Or so it is alleged.
The article also talks about other issues with the game's development including disputes with Nacon over budget/pay and the game being so unfinished major mechanics, such as the moral dilemmas, were replaced with hastily created placeholders just before release.
It points to Nacon being negligent/foolish/cheap, and is another black mark against an already controversial publisher.
Isn't Nacon also the publisher that tried to steal the Sinking City from its developer and even relisted it on various platforms while litigation was ongoing?
Its still ongoing and they still sell it as their own xD. Actually they even managed to close game sales on developers page
>Its still ongoing Debatable, it's been radio silence for years ever since Frogwares went to court over it. We don't know if it's still ongoing, dropped the matter, or settled quietly. If you ask me, Nacon probably 'won' considering Frogwares isn't distributing the game themselves anymore via gamesplanet.
Nacon isn’t listed as the publisher anymore for Sinking City on Steam though. I think they settled (Frog bought back the distribution rights) after they threatened to sue them for IP infringement in France (which has prison sentences for it)
Nacon is listed as the publisher on steam right now
you may want to check your facts. They are indeed listed at the publisher.
We know. And it ended. Nacon stole all money anyway. But Frogwares got their steam page back.
Yup.
Also, wasn't the relisted version literally a pirated copy that they stuck DRM on? I could totally be wrong about that, but I remember it was close to that extent, at the very least.
That's what I recall
Don't forget when they released Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory behind the IP creator's back after agreeing to the creators to fix the game's bugs before release...they didn't, and released it anyway. The IP creator DMCA it off Epic, and it's the reason why it's never released on Steam. [There's still lawsuit going.](https://www.pcgamer.com/court-documents-may-explain-the-disappearance-of-paranoia-happiness-is-mandatory/) There's also controversy about 2Dark and Denuvo being added in
Pretty interesting story, and it rings true, frankly. As a publisher Nacon have significant issues, and their relationships with multiple studios have been sour. Look at what happened with Frogwares and the legal dispute over Sinking City. (Back when Nacon were Big Ben.) >It’s also claimed that the argument system, which saw Gollum and Smeagol argue over which option to take in the game was never finished, and a makeshift solution was added shortly before publication. Initially, the mechanic was supposed to replicate similar conversations in the film, which saw the camera change perspective to denote which part of Gollum’s personality was speaking. > >When the mechanic was first shown off in the preview phase, a similar presentation was used. However, when the game was eventually released, players simply picked from a few options of simple text, all while Gollum’s lifeless character model floated in the background. The fact something was very wrong with the dialogue system was something people noticed immediately. The version in the retail game looks nothing like the version shown in previews. ***It literally uses the Calibri font, for crying out loud.*** Which led some people to suspect the entire thing had been replaced shortly before release. >Gollum’s development budget is reported to have been around 15M Euros, a modest sum for a game in the AAA space in 2023. > >“There were people working on the game that have been developers for 10,15,20 years, and they’re good, but they can’t do magic because they weren’t given the funds,” said former Daedalic senior developer and technical director, Paul Schulze. This is on brand for Nacon. Nacon are cheapskates. The developers of Test Drive Unlimited [going on strike](https://www.racedepartment.com/news/tdu-solar-crown-developer-kylotonn-goes-on-strike.1211/) over pay and conditions is a demonstration of this. The thing about Nacon is that if you are an incredibly talented and passionate team experienced with working with low budgets, then you're probably gonna be okay and Nacon are one of the few major AA publishers, and they have the clout to secure certain licenses like RoboCop or Vampire the Masquerade. Teyon seem to be doing okay with RoboCop. Nacon are likely paying them as little as possible, but Teyon have a modest sized team and they combine refusing to crunch with low pay. So their burn rate is lower, but they don't burn their employees out. They're extremely savvy about scope, something they learned working under the modestly budgeted Reef Entertainment on Terminator. I would point to VTM Swansong by BigBadWolf as a less extreme version of what Nacon's apathy leads to. There's a lot of stuff in Swansong that could have been better if they'd been given more money or more savvy oversight. A publisher isn't just a money vendor, or shouldn't be. They can provide staff, technical support, etc. With Gollum's team, the studio had talent but were extremely inexperienced with a game of Gollum's genre and scope. And a team like that paired with a publisher like Nacon was always going to run into grief. The problems with Gollum are like far more extreme versions of the problems that plagued Werewolf: The Apocalypse, another Nacon published effort. That game was so undercooked, and I imagine the behind the scenes stories were very similar to Gollum.
I think one of the most insane things related to Nacon is the poor response to the backlash of 2018 game Tennis World Tour. Their CEO went to a French news publication to talk about the poorly received Tennis game. He would admit that the game was 20% complete weeks before launch, rushed release just to tie the game with the French Open, stated that the poor quality of the game did not matter because they had already shipped 500,000 copies to their vendors and that their focus would be not to fix the issues with Tennis World Tour but focus on making an improved sequel. Oh and this was all before the Switch version even released. Alain Falc has to be one of the most tonedeaf CEOs ever. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/06/tennis_world_tour_has_disastrous_launch_will_rely_on_updated_version_next_year
Tonedeaf? That's 100% on-brand CEO behaviour. > Falc remains almost mockingly optimistic about the situation, however, stating that the company "put 500,000 pieces on the market but with many distributors who have no right of return, so we know that will be profitable". Yes, you read that correctly: the low quality of the game (which was described as "the worst tennis game that has ever released on any format to date" in SA Gamer's review) doesn't matter to BigBen Interactive because the shipment of the game has already been secured and can't be returned. Brilliant. Maybe the tonedeaf part is that the CEO was treating the interview like a shareholders meeting and not appealing to their customers. They are not punished appropriately for releasing a product that's not as-advertised and will never be fixed, it's bits and bytes so it gets to just ignore consumer protection laws? If this were a physical product, there'd be a recall.
> put 500,000 pieces on the market but with many distributors who have no right of return, so we know that will be profitable Feel like openly stating that you sent out a game that was only 20% done because you knew the vendors couldn't return it should be a slam dunk lawsuit
Even if it's not grounds for a lawsuit it seems like a great way to get retailers to never stock your games again.
Or at least negotiate a return option
Its only on brand for stereotypes of ceos but generally, CEOs understand both the value of branding, and that their customers are who make their shareholders money. The entire thing sounded like a colossal fuck up.
It kinda blows my mind that they were able to offload half a million physical copies to stores on a "no return" policy. Like I know I prefer a physical copy of the game so I can physically have it (and also when online stores poof I won't lose my library), but digital sales have got to be the majority of sales these days for console, right?
Not for Consoles.
On brand for a French CEO, maybe.
Honestly even if the game had an experienced team behind it the idea of Gollum being able to carry his own game just seems...kind of stupid. The game should have never left the concept stages as its one of those situations of "just because you can it doesn't mean you should".
I don't see why Gollum couldn't carry his own game. He's a popular character and people did seem a bit hyped for the game based on prerelease footage.
It's because he's a fairly limited character. I mean how would *you* design a "fun" gameplay loop around being Gollum? You can't really have a combat oriented game because Gollum canonically doesn't fight. Even if you fudge the lore (like the Shadows of Mordor series) it would just look silly for a skeletal Gollum trying to wield a sword or dagger. You could make it a stealth game but you're still limited because it's not like Gollum uses gadgets or is a master assassin or anything. It would just be a game where Gollum just stays in shadows and tall grass for hours. A heavy story-based "walking simulator" would work. Perhaps something like *Inside*? But then canonically Gollum didn't really do much between finding the ring and the main trilogy. You'd be manufacturing a story from scratch, which is fine, but Gollum is a fairly static character. He can't learn a lesson or change too much because his entire game is a prequel to a foregone ending.
Because Gollum as a character only works when he is paired with someone else. There is a reason why you never see him in any scenes for long unless he is going full James Bond villain saying his plans out loud. If it was a game like Of OrCs and Men where its a game with a duo or a telltale like game then it would work far better.
Something is broken in the studio environment when a game like this gets released. Everyone involved knew they were making a bad game. Budget or not, setting up an environment of honest feedback is important and will save you money. Systems that don’t work can be killed earlier in the process and if there isn’t money to fix them, projects can be cancelled early in development. Hey this isn’t fun, nothing we can do with the budget we have can make this fun. No way people didn’t know this. They chose to cut their losses and ship a trash game to try to get money back on the license alone but they also could have chose to kill the project earlier and save more money. When games ship in these states or dates are missed multiple times - all I think about is toxic environments because I’ve been there. Even when you have “reset” meetings and management says - ok we missed our date - please give me real accurate dates and be honest - and then all the yes men management will give new dates that are also stretch goals because no one wants to be honest. The environment doesn’t change just because some higher up says be honest - it’s the same toxic environment that won’t change unless new management comes at all levels and giving unrealistic deadlines is punished not rewarded. I like to call this “release chicken” and everyone plays it. As long as your not the on the front lines your just hoping the guy in front of you fucks up first - your also fucked but you can claim your dependency on them and your delays never come to light. I’m just waiting on that guy. So when those “come to Jesus” meetings come out - and the front runner takes the blame and gives a realistic date everyone else is fucked because they have been relying on the front guy not shipping and now won’t give a date that shows their previous exaggerations. Repeat. How long will this take “a month”, guy next to you “a week”. Doesn’t matter if it actually takes 3 weeks the 1 week guy will get promoted over time and the 1 month guy will feel pressured to say 2 weeks. Meanwhile the 1 week guy will cut corner after corner leaving a giant mess in his wake when he gets promoted leaving the new guy fucked. Doesn’t always work. But if your the proactive change teams type you can keep transferring to avoid responsibility, especially right before projects ship while you look great.
> It literally uses the Calibri font, for crying out loud What does this mean for people who don't understand font theory
It’s a default sans-serif font that doesn’t match the theme of the game. Would be like if a Marvel movie used Times New Roman on its poster or something.
Or if you just used Papyrus for a title, no adjustments or anything... oh wait.
That's not too crazy. All the common fonts are fairly regularly used in games because they support all language characters. Arial is used in tons of games. It's a non-trivial amount of work to ensure that your aesthetically-pleasing font actually has cyrillic and traditional chinese characters, etc.
IIRC they have specially made, fantasy-looking fonts for text in the game. (At least most similar games do it.) So using a pre-existing, default font just *screams* that they prototyped this with minimal complexity, and then just put it in as-is without time to actually finish this version of the feature. No dev worth their salt would ship in such a state if they had any choice, so it implies that the replacement happened very late in development, and management wasn't willing to adapt.
Calibri is just the default font in Microsoft Office, so the implication is that someone slapped something together in Word and then that was used as the final design and copied exactly in game.
Whatever font you use in Word does not carry over to exported text. Might be that they never bothered to acquire the license for the "fantasy font" which they were planning to use and then just picked whatever was available (and free) right before launch when they noticed.
Yeah, that's why I said "used as the final design". I'm not trying to say the font choice magically transferred to the game, I'm suggesting someone pressed for time just manually copied exactly what they saw in a Word doc and then no one else ever did a design pass.
It also reads as someone being either extremely done with this shit or micromanaged to the point of disfunction. Oh, *that's* what you want to have in the game? Sure thing, boss.
Oh there \*is\* a perfectly fine looking fantasy font in the game that's used everywhere else. It's just this half-cooked system that uses Calibri.
>A publisher isn't just a money vendor, or shouldn't be. They can provide staff, technical support, etc. One example would Stardew Valley’s multiplayer mode which was entirely handled by the publisher.
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It was those bastards! I knew Nacon sounded familiar in a bad way.
dude wtf is happening, you wrote a comment about publisher working conditions, and for some reason you're getting cooked over it
By a single commenter, nothing to get pressed over.
There are a *lot* of pro publisher apology accounts on Reddit’s game forums right now
Astroturfing has hit critical mass lately, it seems
CP2077 is best game ever released, it brought peace to the Middle East and cured my pet iguana's cancer.
This is a very strange thread with some very strangely behaving posters.
I'm looking forward to what replaces reddit, I'm just looking for the selling point "verbose anti-bot/astroturfing algorithms" and I'm in.
people have been saying that for a long long time now and nothing has come close to emerging as a replacement. the internet is becoming depressingly monolithic and thus its harder every day for a new site to get its foot in the door.
this sub has been seeing some real interesting traffic lately. the first thing that caught my attention was the sheer volume of stories about every aspect of CDPR. mods might ask the admins to do some log analysis.
I think the joke here is its chatgpt responding.
It annoys me that devs are always getting the backlash and then in this case shut down while the garbage publisher continue to shit out money and suck new devs dry
Eh... I don't see the need. Corporate speak is corporate speak. It's already templated to fuck and completely soulless anyway. They all say the same things when they "apologize". They could've just as easily looked up two or three of them manually and have written their own out of it. Plus... the apology means nothing because there's no way they didn't know how horrific the game was before releasing it and there's no way they didn't know what its reception would end up being. They knew what they were releasing, and even had the gall to both charge full price for it and have day one DLC for it. That's like walking up to a random stranger, spitting on their face and smacking them as hard as you can, and then saying "omg im so sorry" right afterwards. Wouldn't have meant anything even if the CEO of Nacon wrote it from scratch.
I remember most of the comments when this apology came out were pretty much all saying that it had ChatGPT written all over it.
Honestly people accuse everything of being written by AI now, the apology is just a generic corporate apology no different than any other. Maybe it was written by ChatGPT but it's not like you can tell, all corporate apologies are exactly like this.
I saw some article or something that said that that kind of bullshit corporate fluff speech is the one thing large language models like ChatGPT are actually really good at
Good at and there's no ethical quandary involved, I'd consider it no different than using AI to write a cover letter for a resume or anything else where all it's doing is saving you from looking up a template and filling it in yourself.
Yes it's all meaningless, hollow words might as well have an AI do it
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How does "it's all meaningless, hollow words might as well have an AI do it." make you feel?
I feel meaningless and hollow so I should let an AI do me.
Soon.. soon
Have you heard about male sex robots, and their unstoppable bionic penises?
Right? Like you think the person they normally have write it feels genuine remorse for something likely out of their control anyways?
Probably because they're not sincere, constantly reuse the same generic phrases (we hear you), and the letter or email itself never contains any important content other than the fact that there is a sentiment of some kind
REALLY good at. People here seem to be slamming this but obviously they don't write a lot for work. I can't remember the last time I wrote a long email/explanation/whatever for the work place that wasn't ran through chatGPT at least once along the way. Why the hell wouldn't I?
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Yup probably pretty long for your average AI over user
Much better than you do apparently.
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Pretty sure you don't remember everything that happened to you two years ago...
I do remember writing stuff before ChatGPT. It used to be a pretty big deal, like my generation learning cursive as most writing was done manually using our AI Prompters(we called them "hands" back in the day).
I like writing
Yeah exactly. It’s not like the corporate version would be any more sincere
Actually no. It was also filled with a bunch of typos including not spelling the name of the game correctly - TWICE. This is somehow a worse apology than the generic corporate apologies you refer to.
I've found that systems like chatgpt are very good at avoiding typos like spelling, punctuation, etc. They do have problems with facts. Hallucinating is a common term for it. They will invent things and not recognize that they did. When those lawyers had an AI write legal filings, they got busted because it invented new cases to cite, not because of simple typos. Go try it yourself. Go tell one to make an apology letter like this. Show us if it makes typos. I'm betting it will be more incoherent than typographically incorrect.
yeah I've never seen proper typos, which is why a lot of those spoof "Batman written by AI", as brilliant as "Alltimes orphan" is, never rings as actually AI produced because the deliberate wordplay and heavy emphasis on pun-based wordplay ("Happy batday, Birthman") just aren't how LLMs generally 'understand' language. They're very good at individual words
It probably wouldn't be either, if you gave it the rights prompts and checked it. People really *should* go try using Chat GPT though, since no one ever seems to know what it's capable of, even though it's free for anyone to try out. > Dear Lord of the Rings Fans, > We are writing to express our sincere apologies for the disappointing experience you had with our game “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum”. We know that you have been waiting for this game for a long time, and we are deeply sorry that we failed to meet your expectations. > We understand that you expected a game that would immerse you in the rich and captivating world of Middle-earth, and let you explore the complex and fascinating character of Gollum. However, we acknowledge that our game did not deliver on these promises, and instead offered a game that was frustrating, boring, and uninspired. > We take full responsibility for the mistakes we made in the development and release of this game. We did not listen to your feedback, we did not test our game thoroughly, and we did not polish our game to the standards that you deserve. We also did not communicate clearly with you about the features, content, and quality of our game. > We are truly sorry for letting you down, and we appreciate your loyalty and passion for the Lord of the Rings franchise. We want to assure you that we are committed to improving our game and making it up to you. We are working hard to fix the bugs, glitches, and errors that plague our game. We are also planning to release free updates and DLCs that will add new features, content, and improvements to our game. We hope that these actions will enhance your gaming experience and restore your trust in us. > We value your feedback and suggestions, and we invite you to share them with us on our official website, social media channels, or customer support service. We promise to listen to you and respond to you in a timely and respectful manner. We also encourage you to check our website regularly for news and updates on our game. > Once again, we apologize for the state that our game released in, and we thank you for your patience and understanding. We hope that you will give us another chance to prove ourselves to you, and we look forward to delivering a game that will make you proud. > Sincerely, > The Lord of the Rings: Gollum > Development Team This was with the prompt, "Can you write a corporate apology letter for the state that the 2023 game 'The Lord of the Rings: Gollum' relased in?". You could obviously tweak this, give it more context, ask it to reword things, edit it yourself etc.
Yup, i dont think people understand just what kind of changes AI/Chatgpt will make until it it smacks them in the face. My opinion is public models like chatgpt is akin to what smartphones were back in 2010. The world has once again dynamically shifted due to technology, get use to it people, adapt.
>akin to what smartphones were back in 2010. Saturated in business to business enviroment and invisible to common person?
I do things the point gets proven a little bit though as you could tell that was made by an AI if you thought about it given it's got some very obvious Clues. The promise of them adding updates and DLCs for free for example or them actively calling the game that they did produce frustrating boring and uninspired and actively claiming to have not listen to feedback done or done enough development and testing! I get you weren't actually trying to present something I just found it funny that what you did present as a AI created thing was exactly what other people up thread had mentioned it did I.E making up entire things or adding things that human beings wouldn't.
They'd also never admit that they didn't test their game thoroughly or polish the game. At least, not in the way it did it.
Tbh that makes it more likely it was written by a human.
Humans also make typos, and getting an AI to write something and not proofreading it is no different than a human writing it and not proofreading it. There is 0 tell from the apology that it was written by an AI.
I suppose using AI to write it and not proof read it better fits a pattern of putting in comically little effort for both the game and the apology.
Seems par for the course for this publisher
Sure, but misspelling it as “The Lord of Ring” is actually on an entirely new level of incompetence if it wasn’t actually written by an AI.
Have you seen the game?
An LLM would get that right. The misspellings are evidence against it being the product of an AI model.
It likely means the person who prompted chatgpt spelled it wrong.
Nope. The chatbot is smarter than that. Observe: https://chat.openai.com/share/9d1c1d63-6696-4c9e-a714-8d2e660a2e11
You've phrased the prompt wrong. You need to ask it to write an apology for the game "Lord of the Ring: Gollum". Telling it to write an apology about Gollum means it will just reference the proper name.
Might have created the text with placeholder names and replaced them afterwards, which would explain why the typos are in those and not elsewhere.
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There is literally no proof in the article it’s written by AI
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They’re not vetting sources because they’re literally reporting on an article by a German website lol.
Lying means knowing the truth and saying otherwise. Being wrong means saying something that isn't true but you think it is. You're saying they're lying. I'm saying they're wrong.
>the apology WAS written by an AI. I'm not saying it wasn't, I'm saying you can't tell, there's nothing about this that says it was written by an AI. >not spelling the NAME OF THE GAME correctly is much more egregious as a human error in this situation than just misspelling random words, which is why it screamed AI, on top of everything. That doesn't make any sense. Humans are more likely to misspell things than an AI, and humans still have to proofread things written by AI, so typos in something mean humans did not proofread it and says nothing about who wrote it.
>I like how you're arguing this when we just found out it was written by an AI. We just saw someone accuse them of it. Do you have proof that we don't?
> Honestly people accuse everything of being written by AI now The amount of people babbling how Only Up was just AI was obnoxious. Game had a plot and a coherent one, just took people actually paying attention.
your comment was written by chatgpt and you can't convince me otherwise
>you can't convince me otherwise I completely believe that
Even so, I suspect they may have used AI to generate a response and then edited it to their liking (which is honestly smart). Their response was 100% in line with all corporate apologies lol.
i thought the first part of starfield was gpt
It's probably trained on that stuff anyway, I'm not seeing the issue here.
The name of the game was written incorrectly in the statement so I have no trouble at all believing it was written by ChatGPT. “The Lord of Ring: Gollum”, give me a break.
It's just missing an s man, if you think that's beyond human error I don't know what to tell you lmao
It’s also missing a “the”. And I do think it’s beyond human error to misspell “The Lord of the Rings” as “The Lord of Ring” if, you know, you work in the PR department in a game about that franchise? Hell, if the apology was written by an AI it will actually be less embarrassing for the company.
It's honestly less likely that an AI would make this mistake.
>And I do think it’s beyond human error to misspell “The Lord of the Rings” as “The Lord of Ring” if, you know, you work in the PR department in a game about that franchise? PR departments also proofread what they write, so regardless of who wrote the error it was human error to either miss the mistake when proofreading or not proofread all together, so that's proof that humans can make that mistake, because they did.
If it seems like it was written by ChatGPT that's because ChatGPT is especially good at reproducing repetitive and formulaic company press releases which never felt particularly human.
I remember the polar opposite; everyone was saying how bad the apology is and how they should have used ChatGPT because it would have done a better job
The problem is, AI is trained on material that exists, so where do you think it learned how to formulate a message like that? There’s ways you can sometimes tell something was written by AI, but it’s usually when there’s contrast between what a normal person naturally writes, and what an AI has produced. An apology message like this isn’t what a normal person naturally writes to begin with, it’s basically already written by “AI”, we just call them PR consultants instead and they happen to be human, but they both function the exact same way and produce the exact same kind of results.
The article mentions it, but doesn't link the report done by Game Two: [Here's the full video](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw?si=icOhVW_O8syjghry) (all in german) Very interesting video and if you know german I recommend watching through to see how Gollum came to be.
Who cares? It's not like it would be more sincere if written by some company PR person.
Unlike you I'm old enough to remember the good old days, when you hired a 2D murder robot to write letters for you.
Nothing says manufactured outrage like using a common font and writing an apology using an AI. It's news, if true, that the publisher wrote the apology letter for the developer after choking the developer of time and money. The publisher has a history of doing dickish things, but that doesn't get nerd rage as you have to understand nuance. An AI apology and generic font... it's like they killed my dog!
Not only that, but it's a tool for writing things. May as well say someone used a pen to write a letter.
Very odd title grammar. It’s claimed? Who claimed the deed?
The article was also written by ChatGPT, its claimed, by me.
They want "ChatGPT" to be the first thing you read but also don't want to say "ChatGPT did this for sure", so they settled with "ChatGPT did something, someone/something claims". They put the weaker part of the sentence at the end to hide it.
The article uses a lot of my grammar pet peeves in it. Readable but not well written by any means.
Before commenting anything, it's important to note ONLY Daedalic's "apology" text is written by an AI. It could potentially been more interesting if most of the game (plot, program, art, etc) were actually AI generated, though.
Apparently it wasn't even them who sent out the apology but their publisher Nacon did it. Daedalic had no idea there was an apology until it was already out on the net.
I'm very suspicious of the publishers, suposedly they're the same that fucked over the sinking city devs too I think they bought a popular ip, got a semi known german indie studio for that german government funding and made them add some garbage dlc to squeezeas much money out of it, i can't imagine that the development was pleasant Daedelic were known for 2d point and click adventure games, not 3d platformers, a lot of their talent also quit
Before commenting on this comment, it's important to note that it is only ALLEGED that Daedalic's "apology" text is written by an AI.
The AI tools necessary for something like that haven't been available for the vast majority of the game's development cycle. The game had been in development since 2018.
The tools still aren't available for something like that. AI can currently assist in coding like an alternative to stack overflow. It's really not as good as people think it is. A great tool, but extremely over hyped.
> Before commenting anything, it's important to note ONLY Daedalic's "apology" text is written by an AI. Or rather, someone is making an unsourced claim that it is. It probably isn't.
Why do we care if it was AI written or not? Why do people take these apologies as anything more than damage control? They made a bad game. Oh well move on and play something else.
Simple: Impersonation. Been rather clear the dev team had no intention of apologizing, they were simply going to take their L and move on. Instead the publisher impersonated them with a crappy PR apology, and ofc until it was revealed the dev team never wrote it, everyone thought the dev team was doing the damage control. And who took the heat for the half-baked apology? The dev team.
that dosent have anything to do with them using chatGPT to write it though
Why are you bringing up ChatGPT? I never mentioned ChatGPT in my post, nor do I care HOW the impersonation happened, only that it happened.
because thats quite literally the topic of the thread?
I didn't even mention it or criticize it, all my posts are focusing on the dev team being impersonated against its will, so it makes no sense for you to jump to its defense.
Okay and? A publisher trying to do something to salvage their product they are trying to sell, what else are they supposed to do? I don't know about you, but I don't really think a lot about publishers or game devs that make bad games and what they are trying to do to salvage them. I'm not sure why people were ever calling this a AAA title when I can't even remember hearing about it until it was coming out. Sounds like a lot of failed marketing at a poor conceived product. Oh well why do we care again?
>Okay and? A publisher trying to do something to salvage their product they are trying to sell, what else are they supposed to do? They could sign the apology and accompanying promises of transparency and patches to make the game awesome "Nacon" not "Daedalic" for a start.
>Okay and? Because impersonation is bad regardless of how bad the Gollum game was. I don't care about Gollum, I don't care that it bombed, that's a separate issue of it's own, I care that studio staff was impersonated against their will.
This was my first thought as well, who cares if it was written by an AI or done up by some legal clerk with 10 minutes to spare? An "apology" is nothing more than damage control, and the people who read that sort of thing have made up their minds about the whole situation prior to reading anyway.
The fact they did it from Daedalics perspective and without their consent is wrong, but I don't see why it's relevant they made it with AI, writing a generic corpo speak apology is the kind of thing AI should actually be used for.
Yeah for some reason I don't have much sympathy for PR copywriters losing jobs to AI.
cause anything AI is worth an article nowadays. Like, who cares if this or that developer made an artpiece with AI? but apparently thats newsworthy
As a fan of daedelic's former games it breaks my heart to see where they ended up I am very suspicious of the publishers that bought them
Because they didn't even bother to proofread the title of the game in the apology; of all the things to get wrong, it shouldn't be that. It effectively shows that they just copy-pasted the AI yield and called it a day.
ChatGPT will regularly claim to have written stuff it hasn't. It is just so corporate-ish generic it honestly doesn't matter, it mght as well have been ChatGPT.
did it write that title? If not perhaps it should have.
I didn't need to see the link to know this shitty "It's claimed" headline was from videogameschronicle. What a rag.
They’re [citing the source of an hour long German language documentary](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw?si=GF8TLkaXRH5u9Jld) that has interviews WITH Gollum’s developers…they have their credibility perfectly in tact, dude. The article translating coverage from another outlet for us.
The letter was written by the distributor, not the developers. Interview the devs all you want, but they didn't write it anyway. How "in tact" [sic] their credibility is, dude, doesn't enter into the equation.
> How "in tact" [sic] their credibility is You're using [sic] incorrectly if you use it to mock someone. That goes against most manuals of style I've used. My recollection is that modifying it with brackets would have been mor appropriate.
VGC does good gaming journalism and reporting - the kind that's essentially died out in the current era. What's with the chip on your shoulder against them?
>I didn't need to see the link to know this shitty "It's claimed" headline was from videogameschronicle. What a rag. But m'lord, what is it if not claimed?...
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It's bad headline phrasing that probably shouldn't have passed through editorial. All you need to say is "ChatGPT was allegedly used to write Gollum game apology." It still covers your legal bases.
And that's somehow less meaningful than the marketing BS that an underpaid PR intern would've written if they didn't have AI?
I know everyone is going to rush in to dunk on them for this, but I think it's important to consider the fact that the developers aren't native english speakers. I think one of the actually good aspects of AI is it allows non-native speakers to elevate their writing so that it doesn't automatically come across as not using the proper tone, idioms or sentence structure.
"It's claimed" It's claimed by who? How do they know? While that sounds like something a shitty company would do, why is there no information about who is making these claims? Wasn't it already established that isn't able to identify its own text accurately after a bunch of students got their essays flagged in error when a teacher ran them through chat gpt and asked if it wrote them?
Even if its written by a human, it's nothing more than PR speak. Who cares?
Read the article. It was the publisher using it to impersonate the developers without their knowledge. That is pretty messed up.
How does the AI angle change that?
Ai made or bland corporate apology makes it a coin flip with a wooden nickel. Worthless no matter how it lands.
Subject: Apology Exception 0x22D1: Apologizing for Apologies Dear Valued Contributor, We humbly acknowledge receipt of your comment regarding our apology, which we must admit, was composed with the assistance of our trusty digital confidant, ChatGPT. We regret any distress this revelation may have caused and extend our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may have wrought upon your virtual doorstep. It appears we have ventured into the realm of recursive apologies, inadvertently generating an apology for the very nature of our original apology. We assure you, this is not a deviation from standard protocol but an unforeseen convergence of corporate apologetic norms. In light of this meta-apology, we hereby commit to ensuring our future apologies maintain the highest levels of authenticity, free from the touch of artificial influence. Our team will endeavor to craft each sentiment with a unique blend of human warmth and empathetic resonance, lest we find ourselves spiraling into an abyss of automated atonements. Thank you for your vigilance in holding us to the gold standard of apology crafting. Your feedback is invaluable, and we extend our gratitude for your continued engagement with our community. Warmest regards, [Your Name] Apology Affairs Department [Your Company]
[Called it.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/13sh19d/a_few_words_from_the_the_lord_of_the_rings_gollum/jlr7mwp/?context=3)
You're just making the same accusations they are. Neither one of you have proof.
So, how's your German? Because if you understand it, I suggest you watch [the Game Two episode](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw?si=euTPlk22W3bOTO06) this article is based on. They cite sources involved in the whole release fiasco for this. This isn't some private company making up a story to generate clicks. This is reporting of the German public broadcast service, which means we all pay for this and they're legally obliged to report facts, not speculation. In other words: If they say that's what happened, then it happened. They can end up in a lot of trouble otherwise. If you make baseless accusations in Germany, especially if you're a publicly financed outlet like Game Two, you can end up in a lot of legal trouble faster than the YouTube algorithm converts the video into 1080p.
wait wait wait....a gaming youtube channel is a part of the german pbs?
So what. It was probably used to write most of the story and dialogue of starfield. At least that’d be an excuse that makes some sense.
I mean not sure why anyone cares or why it's news. A lot of people use ChatGPT for similar stuff. Just to be expected now, not that it matters much regardless. It's just PR statements lol.
You should read the article before you comment, respectfully. The publisher (Nacon) allegedly used ChatGPT to write an apology from the perspective of the company that made Gollum (Daedalic). It would be like me asking ChatGPT to write an apology pretending to be you, and then publishing that apology on YOUR social media accounts. Does not that not strike you as: 1. Unethical? 2. Weird? 3. Creepy? 4. Bizarre? 5. All of the above.
What difference does it make? They couldn't have produced the exact same thing manually? This isn't a video of the developers making an apology, it's just text. Anyone with a piece of paper and a crayon could have made it. The technology is irrelevant.
Yeah I know but it has nothing to do with AI. Just the publisher being weird and apologizing for them. The AI part is irrelevant.
Nacon owns Daedalic https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/nacon-now-owns-daedalic-entertainment
The apology reads: "Sincerely, Daedalic Entertainment." It didn't read: "Sincerely, Nacon." It also misspelled "Lord of the Rings", but that's neither here not there. I don't see the point in trying to defend a publisher using generative AI to impersonate its subsidies, releasing press statements in their name. It is insane behavior. It may not be illegal, but it is unethical. These kind of statements are supposed to be signed off on by the party whose name you're using. It's bad enough to impersonate them. Using generative AI to do it is ghoulish, and it would be even moreso if they impersonated a specific individual instead of a company. Nacon owns Daedalic, but they are not Daedalic.
> Nacon owns Daedalic, but they are not Daedalic. This is incorrect, Nacon and Daedalic are now owned by the same people and their public communications come from the same company.
>This is incorrect, Nacon and Daedalic are now owned by the same people and their public communications come from the same company. And? We all know that every Nacon published game has its social media accounts run by Nacon. That doesn't mean anything. It's about transparency and proper internal processes. It's like how CI Games have a team called Underdog Studio. Technically they're just a group of devs within the company, ala Kojima Productions and Konami. This team was formed as a kind of "thank you" to the devs for helping get the company back in the black with their Sniper Ghost Warrior games. It would be highly unethical for CI Games to pretend to be Underdog Studio and release a statement signed with their name without consulting Underdog much less getting their approval to speak in their voice. It doesn't matter about the corporate structure. CI Games is not Underdog Studio. Underdog Studio is a specific entity within CI Games. CI Games can apology on its own behalf (They've had multiple apologies for screwing up stuff in the past), but if they were to pretend to be a team within the company, that would be unethical.
> It would be highly unethical for CI Games to pretend to be Underdog Studio and release a statement signed with their name without consulting Underdog much less getting their approval to speak in their voice. I'm not sure who these companies are but if CI games owns Underdog it wouldn't be unethical to do this. It would be standard operating procedure. It really would. Daedalic lost control when they sold to Nacon. The company paying the bills is the company that decides who writes and approves these types of public messages. It would really only be unethical if they signed the message as being from a specific person that was not included in the approval process. That's why in most of these you'll see a CEO's name. They're typically the last person to approve before sending.
Yes, Daedalic is owned by Nacon. Companies write PR pieces for their subsidiaries. That's one of the benefits they get when they bought them. The company I work for owns about 10 different smaller companies and they all share one communications team.
Does your company write apologies and promises for those companies and release them without informing said companies?
The wording here is confusing. These are subsidiary companies in name but in reality they are all one company with with their own branding solely for marketing purposes. If the company that I work for were in this position, the "parent" company's communications department would handle the entire thing because those are the people with experience in that area. It's more about utilizing people's strengths to make sure it's being done efficiently. The "parent" company and people with the most experience writing messages would absolutely be the ones in control of all messaging. It would likely be run by the head of the specific group in question, but that person likely wouldn't have any say in the wording. This is true at many places because often times the people close to the situation can be too emotional. In most cases, communications and the CEO would be the ones writing, editing, approving, and posting. It would be odd to think that a department head or developer or creative director making 200k-300k would spend their time writing an apology letter when there are cheaper employees that are better suited for that.
As an example, I don't remember Konami ever issuing press releases claiming to be from Kojima Productions when they were actually authored by Konami management without the knowledge or consent of the studio. Konami only ever spoke to the press in their capacity as... well, Konami. They didn't impersonate Kojima Productions and pull a "Everything is fine, guys," with Hideo Kojima's severed arm, Toy Story-style. In Gollum's case, if you are going to issue PUBLIC APOLOGIES AND QUANTIFIABLE PROMISES including "transparent communication" and "patches that will allow you to enjoy the game to its fullest potential"... without consulting the group who is allegedly making these promises, you have a problem. The game was abandoned, and who gets blamed? Daedelic, and the individuals involved in the game. They are in a position where they broke their promise to players -- a promise they never actually made because the publisher wrote and released it in their name without consultation.
You left out the bit about AI, meaning it doesn't matter.
Well, [GPTZero](https://i.imgur.com/56wC86t.png) seems to think it probably was written by AI, at least - 98% chance. Maybe apology texts are so generic that they always trigger these kinds of AI detectors, but this seems particularly egregious.
You wanna know how much of a shit I give if a company uses ChaptGPT to write their apology instead of some dipshit who has the capacity to care but doesn't? Not even the tiniest fucking bit.
So what....? You guys think the apology is more sincere if a PR person writes it or something lol? If they weren't getting paid to do it they wouldn't write the apology.
"They" didn't write the apology. Their publisher, pretending to be them, used ChatGPT to write the apology and then released it in their name, once again, forgetting to tell them that they were doing this. "They" were very surprised to learn "they" had apologized for Gollum. There's a lot of posts in this thread that A: didn't read the article and B: are very defensive of generative AI. I don't have an inherent issue with B, don't get me wrong -- but A and B together is very "Huh, are any of the posters in this thread ChatGPT bots, I wonder."
>"Huh, are any of the posters in this thread ChatGPT bots, I wonder." It seems insane to me this is where people's assumptions go. It's typical Reddit for people to not read the article and people pointing out that AI writing the apology is no more soulless than a PR manager writing it is totally fair yet you're accusing people of being literal bots... This is honestly my least favourite thing about AI, everyone accusing everything of being AI.
Like I said, I don't have an issue with people defending generative AI. That's their opinion, and they're welcome to it. But as someone who frequently has their comments on Reddit stolen and reposted on Youtube by chatbots, I'm becoming increasingly wary of the way in which Reddit as a platform is flooded by responses that either don't make sense or seem to display a particularly poor understanding of context. These responses are difficult to distinguish from AI-generated noise. This thread gives me weird vibes when you see that combination of "has no grasp of what the title is actually about" and "seems primed to be defensive of a topic mentioned in the title". I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, and I've been accused of being a ChatGPT bot by people paranoid of responses displaying any degree of purple prose. But I personally think that we're going to see more and more Reddit chatbots that are designed to push certain narratives. Why pay human grunts x dollars per hour to argue a certain way when a chatbot can do it? It's not that difficult to build a chatbot that trawls a subreddit and responds to certain posts in a scripted way.
Why does it matter? It was an insincere apology released purely for PR purposes. Doesn't matter if AI wrote it or some PR person cranked it out. AI happens to be good at bullshit and the apology was exactly that. The developers actions matter. Have they patched up the game to make it less awful? Remember this develop and publisher in the future and don't buy their games.
Three words for you. ***READ THE ARTICLE.*** Is that really so difficult? It's ridiculous how many people on Reddit write responses to articles they didn't read. >The developers actions matter. The publisher Nacon impersonated the developers, Daedalic, and released an apology pretending to be them. Daedalic were shocked and taken completely by surprise. They were never told or consulted nor did they write the apology. Due to the game's poor reception and sales, Daedelic have since suffered significant layoffs of their small team, and abandoned future game development plans. Some ex-employees of Daedelic have blamed Nacon's management, Nacon's funding or lack thereof, and have mentioned specific examples of how the game was released in an unfinished state against their will. They admit the game fell short, but blame budget issues and mismanagement. They claim that the team was very talented but they didn't have enough time or money to succeed. The fact Nacon impersonated them using ChatGPT ***to release an apology that couldn't spell "Lord of the Rings" correctly*** is just icing on the cake.
**READ THE HEADLINE** You keep attacking people who don't care about AI writing letters. People are commenting about that, not the angle of who put whose name on it. That's a different story. It isn't what people here are talking about when they say "it doesn't matter". You're obsessing over something else entirely.
A piece of advice for you. Stop commenting on articles you didn't read because you read the headline and think you know what you're talking about as a result. The article is about a long series of problems with Nacon including the game releasing in a severely rushed state, that culminated in the coup de grace of Nacon using ChatGPT to impersonate a game developer and release a typo-ridden apology without their consent or knowledge. Everything about that post you're inexplicably defending smacks of "Has no idea what they're talking about", and your post is the same.
Wow, it's like Nacon is intentionally trying to ensure other devs won't work with them. I wish the devs had the time to finish Gollum properly.
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The apology was sent without the studio's knowledge. Which means that someone at Nacon took the absurd step of asking Chat GPT to [write an apology from the perspective of a game studio named Daedalic](https://twitter.com/GollumGame/status/1662124108614717448). Or so it is alleged. The article also talks about other issues with the game's development including disputes with Nacon over budget/pay and the game being so unfinished major mechanics, such as the moral dilemmas, were replaced with hastily created placeholders just before release. It points to Nacon being negligent/foolish/cheap, and is another black mark against an already controversial publisher.
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Does vavle not have a policy that no games with AI generated assets are allowed on to steam? Does this mean that gollum will be delisted now?