Telltale games gone bust

[McPhee]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/21/17888162/telltale-games-layoffs-the-walking-dead

"Telltale Games, creators of episodic adventure games like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Batman: The Enemy Within, laid off approximately 250 employees today as part of what the company is calling a “majority studio closure.” According to multiple sources The Verge spoke with, employees were let go with no severance."

Gutted

 

[UnworthyBean]

It is a bit sad to see them go along with all the job losses but I did feel that their niche was a bit dead now*. There is only so much you can do with the interactive cut scene style game. Still loved the walking dead games though, haven't started the final season and as it looks like it wont get finished I probably wont start it.

Apparently they're still going to be finishing the Minecraft games as they've got a deal with Netflix or something?

*Obviously completely my own opinion here

 

[Dannyb01y]

Reading posts from staff on twitter it sounds like they weren't the best company to work for. They were still hiring as of last week, sounds a bit of a shambles.

 

[malachi]

Shame but they didn't do anything else. Making the same type of games on the same old engine.

 

[TheVoice]

Very unfortunate for all the staff, clearly the studio was very poorly managed to suffer such a fall from grace, it'll be interesting to see what insights journalists can get over the next few months into what caused this.

All that said, they were a one-trick pony and the novelty for their "style" had definitely worn off long ago and I'm not convinced their more recent titles were nearly as popular as they liked to make out. Their disdain towards their own customers by reusing and rehashing the same game engine over and over despite repeated complaints about performance and bugs (albeit not from the gaming press who nary had a bad thing to say) totally put me off their games after a while. I can't be the only one.

 

[McPhee]

I always enjoyed their games. I just found it frustrating that they abandoned so many series after the first outing. In recent years, the only games to see sequels were The Walking Dead, Batman, and Minecraft. It's somewhat frustrating to play a game for hours, get to the end of "Season 1", often with a big cliffhanger ending, only to then wait years for a second season that never materializes. I'm assuming the second outings for Batman and Minecraft end in a similar way? And it looks like the final season of TWD won't get completed (which is a bit of a slap in the face to people who have already bought the whole season).

Their business model also seemed bizarre. You could buy a whole season on release and pay full whack, then get an episode every month or two. Or you could wait until every episode of that season had released, and buy the game at half the price (or less). I struggle to see why they would want to do that, when releasing the whole lot in one go likely would have resulted in more full-price sales...

 

[Moothead2]

They were their own worse enemies. Had they focused on fleshing out TWD, Wolf Among Us and Tale from the Borderlands instead of throwing their niche game mechanics and aging engine and game design at every successful franchise they might still be here. A smaller team, longer, more relaxed development cycles devoted to improving their core gameplay and finished games instead of the episodic format would have done wonders in my mind, though I'm no creative director.

 

[jacksgotbones]

Gutted that we may not get all the episodes for TWD Final Season... No end to Clem's story and so so soooo gutted for TWAU2... I so wanted to see what was next for Bigby Wolf and Fabletown

 

[mame]

Only a guess but I would imagine that a game like Walking dead was made in its entirety and then released as episodes just for drip pricing purposes. Lots of people might not buy the full game for £30 but will buy an episode for £6.

 

[beachBOYken]

The Walking Dead series was brilliant, especially the 1st one. That Farmhouse chapter was excellent.

 

[fez]

The whole video game industry is largely toxic and a horrible place to work. They are built on the sacrifices and exploitation of their programmers. Telltale games were a successful company by all accounts so something has gone seriously wrong somewhere.

 

[Smeghead]

I'm reading reports that it's confirmed (from anonymous sources) that there will be no conclusion to the final season. If true, that's both heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time. 6 years of character development and emotional investment down the drain. I wonder if there's anything that can be done in this age of crowdfunding to salvage the final episodes at least?

I always did wonder why they wasted their time on garbage like GoT, Minecraft and Batman. Big, popular IPs they may be, but it's just not what Telltale is famous for. They should have knuckled down with TWD and The Wolf Among Us. Terrible management from bigwigs who are desperate to claw at the big popular names for the sake of alienating their core audience. When you have a franchise like Game of Thrones, which is known for their violence and big epic battles, or Batman who already has all the open world (-ish) Arkham games, why would fans of either of those be interested in a point and click interactive movie?

 

[malachi]

After what I just heard, they were recruiting new staff up until last week. One person got offered a job there, relocated from their home town then to be told "Sorry, you don't have a job here anymore, bye"

Brutal!

Makes you wonder if the upper management knew about this all along but kept quiet till the last minute.

 

[BGGLP]

Gfx were rubbish, couldn’t get into them because of this.

 

[Ysmalari]

I for one am going to miss the games, yes they had their problems but at times the storytelling was excellent and they were a great change of pace to most other games. Hopefully their staff find positions elsewhere such as DontNod and get to develop the genre.

 

[fez]

Makes you wonder if the upper management knew about this all along but kept quiet till the last minute.

Of course they did. You don't go bust without realising you are on the edge a week before it happens. They will have been hoping for an injection of money and then hope to work their way out of the hole. America is awful for this sort of thing because workers have so few rights. I have heard a lot of stories in the US of people moving for a new job only to find the job isn't there when they finally move and go to start work. Seems to be a big issue in the software development industry.

Last I heard, the staff from Telltale games had been invited to meet people from Ubisoft to talk about jobs so hopefully they will all be back in employment soon.

 

[mistersprinkles]

I really enjoyed their Game of Thrones game, and I'm currently playing WD Michonne, WD1, and Guardians of the Galaxy, because I'm all over the place and I can't just play one game at a time. Sorry to see you go, TellTale..

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Didn’t even realise they had gone bust until I got to the final season of the walking dead and the choices wouldn’t sync with their server and then looked at game of thrones which isn’t currently available on the Microsoft store. Shame, they’ve made some fantastic games. I’ve purchased most of them at some point on Steam and have bought the rest of them that aren’t on game pass for my Xbox.

 

[BowdonUK]

I didn't know they had gone bust until this thread. It's a shame as they made some great games and essentially brought life back to an old genre.