Author Topic: TellTale Games has gone bust. All but 25 employees laid off w/o notice.  (Read 3061 times)

Aya Reiko

  • Humans are scary!
Quote
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Today Telltale Games made the difficult decision to begin a majority studio closure following a year marked by insurmountable challenges," began their Twitter post. "A majority of the company's employees were dismissed earlier this morning, with a small group of 25 employees staying on to fulfill the company's obligations to its board and partners.  Pete Hawley CEO Pete Hawley issued the following statement:

"It's been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale as we worked to set the company on a new course. Unfortunately, we ran out of time trying to get there. We released some of our best content this year and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, but ultimately, that did not translate to sales. With a heavy heart, we watch our friends leave today to spread our brand of storytelling across the games industry."

Telltale will issue further comments regarding its product portfolio in the coming weeks.
https://twitter.com/telltalegames/status/1043252010999410689

The skeleton crew that remains will be working to complete Minecraft Story Mode (as Netflix is bankrolling this).  All other projects, including the remainder of The Walking Dead: The Final Season, are cancelled.  All laid off employees were fired without either notice or severance pay.

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Honestly, I felt TTG's formula was played out not long after the first season of TWD.  Choices ultimately didn't matter and, as a result, I stopped caring about their games.  I also think the episodic style of game releases is pretty much on its way out.

Raikaria

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Re: TellTale Games has gone bust. All but 25 employees laid off w/o notice.
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2018, 08:19:44 PM »
Honestly, I felt TTG's formula was played out not long after the first season of TWD.  Choices ultimately didn't matter and, as a result, I stopped caring about their games.  I also think the episodic style of game releases is pretty much on its way out.

100% this.

It's like 'Oh you saved X? Well they die later in the chapter or maybe if you're lucky the next chapter anyway. Save Y? They die too. Same place usually.'

Nothing overarching in the story is under your control. Yes, that's also true for most visual novels; but Telltale's whole thing they pushed their games on was the choices mattering.

The fact their games started being pumped out rather rapidly; and somewhat formulaic as well didn't help. How different are their current games from the first TWD? When your games are formuleic and there's no player agency; of course players are going to lose interest.

I do feel bad for the people who purchased TWD's new season and won't get the conclusion however. But alas; pre-order culture.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2018, 08:26:16 PM by Raikaria »


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Aya Reiko

  • Humans are scary!
Re: TellTale Games has gone bust. All but 25 employees laid off w/o notice.
« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2018, 06:13:23 AM »
I do feel bad for the people who purchased TWD's new season and won't get the conclusion however. But alas; pre-order culture.
I don't think buying it on a per episode basis was available for this season.  I'm looking at the Steam page, and the Season Pass is the only option available.