Inside the struggle to create a cozy Lord of the Rings game

When new employees start at Weta Workshop, they’re herded into a meeting room with a long, unassuming conference table. On the walls, behind panes of glass and in between statues, swords, and masks, are five Oscars. Four of them were awarded to the studio for its efforts on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films. New hires are offered a chance to hold one of those Oscars, but there’s a catch: handling the golden statuette marks you with a curse, preventing you from ever winning one yourself. Rarely do inductees take Weta up on the offer.

Weta Workshop’s fledgling Game Studio hasn’t achieved the same level of prestige as its film and special effects teams. There’s been no success to build superstition, no room for myths. And yet, the studio’s first major console release, Tales of the Shire, seems to have inherited its own curse.

According to more than a dozen current and former employees, the game’s development has been hobbled by ineffective management, plagued with poor decision-making and communication, sidetracked by circumstance, and, ultimately, spoiled by the company’s inexperience in building high-profile video games. One former employee said, “It’s a miracle this game is coming out at all.” Another said making it has been “hell.”

The studio lurched from deadline to deadline to get the game out the door, and a culture of distrust and crunch left staff feeling burnt out, they said. All those who spoke with The Verge requested anonymity, fearing retaliation for breaches of confidentiality.

In October 2024, the studio announced to staff that it would be restructuring, laying off nine staff and disestablishing the positions of lead producer and lead game designer. The changes came as a shock, eroding morale and driving a wedge between Weta’s leadership team and its developers, according to our sources. Four more staff members resigned in the succeeding weeks, dropping the studio’s headcount to approximately 30.

While redundancies have become a familiar story in games, particularly in the last two years, the tale of Weta’s Game Studio isn’t quite that story. It’s the story of a studio attempting to make a big leap into console gaming, one that shows what Weta could do with a Lord of the Rings game. Ultimately, it’s a story about inexperience, exhaustion, the difficulty of developing video games, misunderstandings, and mismanagement.

Perhaps most importantly, it’s a story about perseverance — the tiny marvel of making a video game when the odds are stacked against you.

Weta Workshop’s Game Studio was established in 2012. It came into being during a partnership with buzzy US tech startup Magic Leap, tasked with building gaming experiences for its augmented reality headset. The studio’s staff numbers swelled, and it produced several titles to muted fanfare, including Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders and Dr. Grordbort’s Boosters. When Magic Leap discontinued development of its headset in 2020, a significant but undisclosed number of employees at the Game Studio were made redundant.

Out of the ashes, remaining staff planted the first seeds for Tales of the Shire. In 2020, “cozy” games were exploding in popularity, buoyed by COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and the runaway success of Animal Crossing. The rolling green hills of the Shire provided an ideal backdrop, and Weta Workshop had delivered huge wins with the Lord of the Rings franchise.

The pitch for Tales of the Shire piqued the interest of Private Division, which was an independent label of US-based gaming giant Take-Two Interactive at the time. Private Division provided funding to build a prototype, and by 2022, it had seen enough to partner with Weta and help the studio bring the game to life.

Weta Workshop had never made a video game like Tales of the Shire before. Employees familiar with development suggested the experience that staff had gained working on Magic Leap titles didn’t easily translate to commercial “double A” titles.

From early on, there appeared to be signs of trouble. The game felt more like a handful of disparate quests and minigames, with a lack of focus on gameplay loops, several staff said. This isn’t wholly unusual — game development can be patchwork, a slow and iterative process pulling varying elements together. But the lack of direction put the studio on the backfoot.

According to several developers, Weta’s senior leadership did not view making video games as all that different from its work in film. And because of this, employees and former staff suggested the studio didn’t adequately invest in senior talent or resource the project appropriately. Departments such as design and programming were either understaffed or inexperienced from the beginning, they said, and Weta was aware of the issue but didn’t act to resolve it.

There were also communication issues between departments. One incident, multiple sources told us, was related to the addition of an in-game economic system revolving around collecting buttons. The idea was that, each night after a feast, fat hobbits’ waistcoats would burst open, leaving buttons around the village. The player could pick them up and trade them for items. The feature was greenlit by production and then had to be dropped — there simply wasn’t enough time to add it in against impending deadlines. When the lead designer decided to implement it anyway, staff said it caused significant tension and set the team back a few days.

“We were always chasing after the next milestone and the next milestone, and the timelines we were given were near impossible,” said one Weta employee who worked on Tales of the Shire for multiple years.

The team prioritized hitting milestones, which meant several suggested features and ideas never made it into the game. But the team was hitting deadlines without tackling underlying problems in the code base, which one employee referred to as “a pile of dogshit.” Sometimes, they said, this meant taking shortcuts. Often, it meant they missed crucial time for refactoring, the process of trimming down the code to make it easier to work with. Instead of hiring senior programmers, they said they were kicking the can down the road, incurring a significant tech debt and creating a backlog of work to deal with.

About 18 months into the project, Tales of the Shire had to contend with a shift in leadership, one that employees said tanked morale.

After studio director Amie Wolken quit Weta in November 2023 to take a position as CEO at Dinosaur Polo Club, a New Zealand indie studio, Weta needed a replacement. It took six months to find Tony Lawrence, who arrived at Weta in April 2024. Lawrence had a long career in Australia at multiple studios, including as head of 2K Australia. During his seven-year tenure there, the studio delivered two successful BioShock games and a Borderlands title. After leaving 2K, Lawrence worked at developer Mighty Kingdom, where he served as executive director and chief operating officer when the studio listed on Australia’s stock exchange in April 2021. Mighty Kingdom was once considered a shining light of the Australian games industry, but during Lawrence’s reign, it released just one console game — Conan Chop Chop — that launched to disappointing sales, and the company’s share price crashed 98 percent.

After his hiring at Weta, there was an “instantaneous” shift in the studio’s vibe, according to one employee. “It was like the air stilled, you could feel it, and morale slowly started to crumble from there on,” they said. Those familiar with Lawrence’s hiring said the process felt rushed and noted that Lawrence did not meet with those inside the studio who would be reporting to him. This, one senior team member noted, was “very weird.”

Lawrence did not respond to a request for comment. Weta did not respond to specific questions around his employment either. In January 2025, as The Verge was investigating this story, Lawrence led an all-staff meeting to discuss breaches of confidentiality. In that meeting, he told staff that “it’s not cool to talk to journalists,” discouraging them from speaking about their experiences. Wolken also did not respond to a request for comment.

Alongside internal issues, Tales of the Shire had to contend with a major external one: uncertainty over the fate of its publisher, Private Division. In May 2024, IGN reported Take-Two was “quietly killing” the label, slashing staff numbers and closing two of its studios. By November, Private Division had been sold to an unknown buyer. The upheaval occurred toward the final stages of development on Tales of the Shire and left Weta in limbo for several months. According to multiple sources, Weta also waited on milestone payments. (Private Division did not respond to a request for comment.)

It was unclear to Weta employees exactly when, or if, Private Division would continue. Several staff noted the situation with Private Division was demoralizing, igniting concerns the game may even be canceled.

In January, Bloomberg revealed former staff of publishing house Annapurna Interactive had purchased Private Division’s games and franchises from Take-Two, including Tales of the Shire, with the backing of Haveli Investments, a private equity firm based in Austin, Texas. The new publisher, revealed during this year’s Summer Games Fest, is named Fictions. Weta received its milestone payments, but there has still been confusion for staff, internally, about the state of publishing and which company is overseeing it. Former copresident of Annapurna, Deborah Mars, is listed as cofounder and cohead of Fictions on LinkedIn. She did not respond to a request for comment in March. Fictions did not respond to a subsequent request for comment in June. The press email listed on Private Division’s website bounces.

In an emailed statement, Jessica Wallace, chief marketing officer at Weta Workshop, said, “Neither the departure of Amie nor the challenges [Private Division] has had through the year has impacted directly on the team’s work building a great game.”

One of the most pernicious issues in game development is “crunch,” a practice variously defined as “extended periods of drastic overtime” or “a sudden spike in work hours.” The effect of crunch has been well-studied, with the exploit leaving lasting effects on physical and mental health.

Many current and former Weta staff said they worked long hours, especially as deadlines approached. “It was a systemic problem,” one experienced developer said. “It was a resourcing problem and general mismanagement of the project.”

Three staff members who spoke to The Verge said they felt pressure to work overtime coming from management and senior leadership. In August 2024, as a crucial deadline approached, a company-wide meeting was called. According to those who attended, Weta’s leadership suggested that if the team did not meet this major milestone, then there was real concern over the studio’s long-term sustainability. One staff member told The Verge it felt like the team was “strongly encouraged to crunch” in that meeting.

Another former staff member said that leadership had previously told the studio there was no crunch because such a practice involved working 70 hours or more per week for several months. “I felt a little bit gaslit, given the amount of work that I was doing,” they said.

However, there are employees who shied away from dubbing the extra hours as “crunch,” but noted there were broader issues related to overwork and burnout in parts of the development team. One employee stated, “I do not see our studio as a crunch studio,” suggesting the problem was specific to certain developers who chose to work extra hours and consistently accrued overtime. The studio works on a “swings and roundabouts” model, which is meant to provide employees with the flexibility to bank hours worked and take time off later. In practice, this caused havoc. One staff member mentioned time off was not tracked well, so it was difficult to adequately resource or finance as needs shifted. Often, they said, staff would work extra hours, but they didn’t receive that time back in kind — there was simply no opportunity to take time off with deadlines baring down.

Wallace responded to this by stating, “There was no ‘crunch’ during the development of Tales of the Shire. We extended deadlines to prioritize the well-being of our team, and all staff worked under New Zealand employment agreements, which ensure fair and adequate compensation for all hours worked.”

There is nothing indicating Weta Workshop acted illegally, but staff that spoke to The Verge said there were definitely crunch periods during development of Tales of the Shire. One staff member said they could not remember a time when they were not working beyond 50 hours a week. Another responded to Weta’s statement saying there was no crunch by simply texting back “lol.”

On October 4th, 2024, in an all staff meeting, Weta’s executive team announced there would be a round of redundancies. It was an incredibly disruptive event that shook the team. “That really came out of the blue for us,” said one senior developer.

Leadership explained the need to cut staff was to provide the studio with long-term sustainability. Other parts of Weta’s business were feeling the effects of the pandemic slump in tourism and film, and the studio had yet to sign another contract to fund future projects. Every staff member who spoke with The Verge expressed disappointment. “It was handled terribly,” said a former member of the team.

After the announcement, one staff member said it felt like the “Hunger Games trials to keep your jobs.” They said those whose roles were being “disestablished” would need to reapply for their jobs or other jobs within the studio. One developer said that, post-announcement, coming into work “felt like coming to a funeral.”

According to documentation seen by The Verge, the core development team on Tales of the Shire was predominantly male. Only four senior leadership positions on the project were held by women, while 18 were held by men in early 2024. The redundancies in October 2024 saw the departure of four non-male employees on the team. Today, the studio has five non-male employees on its roster of 26 development staff, sources said. Those ratios are not uncommon in modern, mid-sized studios, but sources noted that this had left diverse voices out of key meetings.

After a final version of the game was completed in November 2024, about half of the studio began working on DLC, although no contract for that work had been signed with a publisher. Other studio heads that The Verge spoke to suggested this is normal as a game approaches release — and for Weta, it helped keep some members of the studio employed — but it is risky given the difficulties already encountered during development, particularly amid the current state of the games industry. Meanwhile, the other half was tasked with building out the studio’s next prototype. The Verge has learned this prototype is codenamed “Groundhog” and is again based on The Lord of the Rings. It is a roguelike, drawing inspiration from the likes of Baldur’s Gate and Diablo.

In an effort to ready the prototype for the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, this past March, where Weta could pitch it to prospective publishers, some employees suggested the crunch culture and overtime hours persisted. “There’s definitely been crunch, and there’s definitely still people doing crunch,” one developer told The Verge in January.

In February, Weta announced Tales of the Shire’s release would be delayed until July 29th, 2025 (a scheduled mobile version for Netflix was also canceled last year). The Verge understands this is to ensure quality assurance has been performed on all platforms, with the Switch port being particularly tricky to get running smoothly.

In addition, The Verge has learned that work on Tales of the Shire DLC was paused in February with no certainty the game will receive content updates at all. In a February 21st memo to staff, Kelly Tyson, the general manager of product at Weta Workshop wrote that Private Division (at the time, codenamed Vero) would deliver a part payment recognizing the studio’s DLC efforts, but “all post-launch content decisions have been delayed until the games in market performance is determined.”

Tyson also stated there was a “funding gap” and the studio would attempt to reduce costs by moving all staff to a four-day workweek, with a 20 percent pay cut for a period of three months. The February 21st email called this a “temporary change,” adding that the goal is to “keep as many people employed as possible.” The change was reversed in mid-May, ahead of schedule, as the studio worked to polish its Groundhog prototype in the hopes of signing a publisher. Those familiar with development have said it feels like a last ditch, all-in effort to keep the studio going, and The Verge understands there are multiple publishers interested in the game.

With Tales of the Shire ready for release, Weta’s Game Studio now must fight for survival in an industry trying to find its feet after two tumultuous years. Investment is much harder to come by, redundancies and closures have become commonplace. So what’s next?

Lawrence is charged with setting the studio’s direction going forward, but there are concerns, internally and externally, about his plans. An executive vision for the game studio, revealed to The Verge in a leaked PowerPoint presentation, is that Weta will become a ”work for hire creative services business.” The presentation, delivered in late 2024, suggests the company will “seek to have worked on five games” over the next five years. It hopes to release at least three, including Tales of the Shire. One staff member said the feeling in the studio was that this presentation was not aimed at staff but seemed to be designed to appease Weta’s executives.

According to a senior figure in the Australian games industry with knowledge of the strategy, this is a recipe for continued overtime and poor working conditions. “I, and the wider industry, would love to know how Weta plans to release five games in five years at AAA quality with an A budget, without implementing crunch or exploiting their staff,” they said. We asked Weta to explain this strategy, but it did not respond.

Despite the challenging environment and burnout, Tales of the Shire is still scheduled to release in July. When I asked current and former staff their enduring memories of making the game, there was a common theme: they truly care about the world they’ve built. Several reiterated how dedicated the development team was, striving to live up to the franchise’s lofty expectations. “I could genuinely spend hours playing my own video game, which is probably kind of rare for a developer to say,” one developer said.

In between it all, they’ve had to contend with periods of crunch and circumstances beyond their control. “It is in spite of Weta Workshop’s leadership that there’s a video game made,” said a senior member of the development team. “It should be a time of celebration, but there’s so many people who won’t get to celebrate their wins because of this fight against the odds.”

Many staff said working at Weta was a lifelong dream — a career highlight. There was excitement about joining a project like Tales of the Shire, especially for those who grew up as fans of The Lord of the Rings. But some of those feelings have eroded. “The personal pride I have felt about this company is just completely tarnished,” said one former employee.

Without significant changes, current and former staff believe the problems experienced developing Tales of the Shire are destined to repeat. “I don’t have a lot of faith in what work we will have after [Tales of the Shire],” one staff member said. Another mentioned ongoing communication and management issues have been flagged with senior Weta members multiple times, but they feel as if the complaints have largely been ignored or dismissed.

In the meantime, the uncertainty around the future of Weta Workshop’s Game Studio and its next project has left some looking for an exit. But staff believe there is a way to break the curse and buck the trends of the past two years: invest in, and trust, people. To quote one experienced developer: “I genuinely think that if Weta Workshop nurtured the brilliance in the studio, they could just sit back and profit.”