Telltale Games (Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us) Lays Off Most of its Staff

[Patty Rose]

Quote

Telltale Games, developer of licensed adventure games such as the Walking Dead series, Game of Thrones and Batman, has reportedly laid off most of its staff and may be shutting down completely.

The Verge is reporting that only a small team of 25 individuals remains with the company. “According to multiple sources The Verge spoke with, employees were let go with no severance,” The Verge reports.

“Telltale employees are also posting on social media that they are no longer employed with the company,” USGamer stated. “An anonymous source familiar with the situation has told USgamer that Telltale filed for bankruptcy.”

A Verge feature story from earlier this year described layoffs at a company that suffered from mismanagement and a lack of new ideas, leading to a plan that would focus on fewer, higher-quality games.

“By all accounts, the layoffs were handled as professionally and gently as possible,” the Verge reported. “Those who had lost their jobs were paid out until the end of the year, and Telltale planned a job fair for them to meet and speak with recruiters. People were not denied severance or escorted from the building by security, but given time to gather their things and say goodbye. The remaining staff was given the rest of the day off so that they could spend time with their departing co-workers; they gathered at a pub in downtown San Rafael.”

We’ve reached out to Telltale Games for comment and confirmation of the news. The final season of the Walking Dead game launched this year. The second season of Wolf Among Us, and an upcoming Stranger Things series were also in development, but the future of those games is unknown. The recent partnership with Netflix seemed to suggest a company planning for the future.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/21/17888258/telltale-games-layoffs

[OWM]

Damn, I certainly didn’t expect this to happen. Always saw Telltale as one of the biggest game companies out there and was invincible.

[Old Man Jenkins]

Sucks to hear (especially with the status of Wolf Among Us season two finding itself caught up in it). The Back to the Future game (which I also wished got a sequel), Walking Dead season one and Wolf Among Us season one were pretty magical experiences for me. I already had a previous attachment to both BttF and TWD beforehand but they made me get into Fables thanks to their Wolf Among Us game. As good as those games were, the quality of their later offerings I played definitely paled in comparison. It slowly started to show with TWD season two and gradually became more noticeable as I played stuff like their Game of Thrones game as well as Walking Dead: Michonne and New Frontier. It used to take me like two hours, maybe a little more if I really took my time taking in the full experience, to play through a single episode of Walking Dead season one and Wolf Among Us, but now I can knock episodes out in about an hour or so. Should be interesting how they cap off their potential swan song of the Telltale Games that we've come to know this past decade with this final Walking Dead season.

edit: oh holy shit nvm, Walking Dead's final season got cancelled. Goddamn tragedy. Rip my $20. Still hope that those that got laid off can rebound from the abruptness of this shit. Heard some people just started working there as recently as last week and are now shit out of luck.

Edited September 22, 2018 by Old Man Jenkins