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.
In the beginning
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.
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