Telltale Games is shutting down and has layed off most of their employees

[AlTech]

Telltale Games today has announced they will be closing their doors and laying off most of their employees as the Studio will be shutting down.

 

The news was posted early by ex-ceo Kevin Bruner followed by an official announcement by the company.

 

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Telltale Games, the studio best known for narrative adventure titles like the Walking Dead, will soon shut down. Early reports suggested that around 90% of the studio’s 250 employees have been laid off, and the company has now confirmed that it will close.

An official announcement says that a “majority” of the studio’s employees were let go today, leaving a small group of 25 to “fulfill the company’s obligations to its board and partners” ahead of the shutdown.

 

“It’s been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale as we worked to set the company on a new course,” CEO Pete Hawley says in the statement. “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.

 

The company will continue to keep a bare minimum of employees to fulfil financial obligations to their shareholders and partners. After which they will be shutting down permanently.

 

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As for what will happen with all of Telltale’s ongoing projects, the studio said it will have “further comments regarding its product portfolio in the coming weeks.”

 

It's a shame that Telltale is shutting down as I've enjoyed a fair few of their games in the past and supported them financially.

 

I hope the employees are at least getting good recommendations and are able to find other jobs in the industry.

 

Sources:

https://www.brunerhouse.com/blog/2018/9/21/telltale-closure

https://www.pcgamesn.com/telltale-games-shut-down-official

[PlayStation 2]

That's what happens when you only make story games.

[Slottr]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

That's what happens when you only make story games.

Im not sure if youre shooting at EA or are genuine 

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

It was bound to happen at some point. When you turn out 50 remixes of the same (not very fun in the first place imo) format it's not gonna go well for you

[AlTech]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

That's what happens when you only make story games.

Some of Telltale's game were quite buggy and some weren't top quality due to corporate forcing them to use the Telltale tool game engine.

 

But if they had the right engine they could have made better story games. I do believe story games are still sustainable in 2018.

[AlTech]

Just now, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

It was bound to happen at some point. When you turn out 50 remixes of the same (not very fun in the first place imo) format it's not gonna go well for you

Yeah. The writing should have been on the wall when the ex-ceo left due to disagreements about the company's future with the board.

[aezakmi]

RIP the walking dead season 60 game

[suicidalfranco]

welp saw that coming miles away, between the reports of them not upgrading their engine to simplify production, starting more projects that they can handle, long ass waiting periods between chapters, and all the crunch.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Just now, AluminiumTech said:

Yeah. The writing should have been on the wall when the ex-ceo left due to disagreements about the company's future with the board.

Decline has been slow but the signs have been there since they settled into that format. You could have done something interesting with that (Subsurface Circular, anyone?) but they got stuck in a rut

[Master Disaster]

15 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

That's what happens when you only make story games.

Nope, there's plenty of studios only doing story driven games who are doing perfectly fine.

 

This is what happens when you fail to change your formula for multiple years, take on far more work than you can handle and stretch yourself so thin that the quality of your products declines to bordering on not fit for purpose.

 

This has nothing to do with games and everything to do with how management managed the business.

[Spotty]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

This has nothing to do with games and everything to do with how management managed the business.

This is a very good point... I mean look at EA games - they're still in business.

[Skiiwee29]

31 minutes ago, aezakmi said:

RIP the walking dead season 60 game

they kept on minimal staffing to finish the next Walking Dead installment from what ive seen. 

[Techicolors]

RIP the wolf among us season 2

[aezakmi]

23 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

they kept on minimal staffing to finish the next Walking Dead installment from what ive seen. 

fuck

[Arcanekitten]

What the fuck. They actually made enjoyable games. Presumably the strangers things game is canned now? 

[S w a t s o n]

They seriously went bankrupt after getting the rights to the walking dead, borderlands, game of thrones, minecraft, guardians of the galaxy, and more? Good job. Maybe make more than 1 game with a different theme painted on top next time

[Drak3]

Good riddance.

 

1 hour ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

That's what happens when you only make story games.

Bit of a stretch to call them games.

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

That's what happens when you only make story games.

To be fair, if it was plural I would understand.

 

I am not very comfortable using a plural noun for telltale: the made one really good game, and then they made it again for insert-franchise-they-could-get-here.

 

Narrative games are fine but they really forgot the "game" part far too much: the novelty from the late 80s and early 90s isn't here anymore so just being a narrative game isn't enough and even during the 90s we already had gimmicks fucking galore with these games launching into the hot new techs like full motion video and whatnot.

[IceCold008]

Dam shame i enjoyed there games. Think ive played all of them. I will miss these type of games tbh.

[Anult]

1 hour ago, Arcanekitten said:

What the fuck. They actually made enjoyable games. Presumably the strangers things game is canned now? 

Pretty much. The remaining telltale staff are working on minecraft story mode for netflix.

 

 

[Eaglerino]

Are they never finishing Walking Dead then or is that already done

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

No one, NO ONE cared for the GOTG, Batman or Borderland games they made, not even Game of thrones TBH, people asked for Wolf among us, and a quick rollout of Walking Dead, and people gave up, The episodic format was a blessing and a curse, no one in thier right mind bought each episode as they came, almost everyone bought it when all episode released, at which the entire game was on sale soon after. they should have just released all episodes like Netflix. they made 400 days DLC which never connected into anything else. they make games with so many threads hanging but never complete it. seriously, who cared about borderlands and GOTG telltale games? 

EDIT: Wait, they were making Strangers things also ? who cares, i hope they effin end the walking dead properly and not leave it incomplete. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Rip The Walking Dead games

[Guest]

As with any Indie studio, it wasn’t really going to last long. You’re either bought out or gone.

[miagisan]

Well that sucks, especially for the walking dead series. Loved those stories.