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TellTale Games is closing down(?)

blackdog

By blackdog
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blackdog

blackdog

Posted
Posted

The sad news broke yesterday, that most of the TTG staff has been let go.
It appears only 25 (of the once 250 strong) staff remain and working on pending projects.

Official tweet:

https://twitter.com/telltalegames/status/1043252010999410689

Gamasutra report:

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/327085/Report_The_Walking_Dead_developer_Telltale_Games_closing_down.php

I think to remember there was news of restructuring and staff being let go months-to-one-year ago(?), but with titles being released wasn't expecting this; despite not being very happy with what they had done with the Batman game I was still looking forward to more games from them, in particular was hoping on The Wolf Among Us 2. It appears they are not even going to wrap up TWD The Final Season! I was waiting for all the episodes to be out to get it, and do a massive play through of all the TWD, having played only the first season back on the X360, but owning all on PC as well.

I had missed they were working with Netflix to develop a Stranger Things tie-in... but according to the article reporting the cancellation of TWD, it seems it will be the Netflix collab on Minecraft Story Mode to be the one that will be honored still. (Interactive TV sounds like a cool idea.)

I hope they can pull it back and somehow avoid closure at the last minute, maybe Netflix could buy them out if this project works and they could recover work on this cancelled projects.

-HP-

-HP-

Posted
Posted

I've been hearing horror stories from people that worked at that studio for a few years now. 

After they shipped TWD and it became a success, the studio went on a death march / constant crunch mode that never ended. So, as a result of that they've been having huge turnover and lost some of their best talent. 

I obviously don't know the details of what happened but when a studio is known around the industry for pulling that kind of stuff, it becomes even harder to stay afloat. 

text_fish

text_fish

Posted
Posted

That is terribly sad news for the staff and fans, I can't say I'm too surprised though as the studio had a pretty limited design formula that largely relied on the success of other people's IP's, and a very spurious claim to be the saviour of "adventure" games.

  • 2 weeks later...
blackdog

blackdog

Posted
  • Author
Posted
On 9/23/2018 at 10:23 PM, [HP] said:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17130056/telltale-games-developer-layoffs-toxic-video-game-industry

This article was so surreal, I felt I was reading a fiction at times. I also sounded so up to this time, was shocking to discover was written a few months ago.
Very lengthy, had to read it in like 4 times.

Anyway, Skybound, the company publishing TWD comics, has reached an agreement to complete TWD The Final Season

it will be interesting to see how they do it, I thought they didn't have a studio themselves, will they give it to another studio, hire TTG devs that lost their jobs, inject more money into TTG to complete the project?

I dunno how to feel, on one part I really want the project to be done, but I can see the point of critiques I've read on Twitter, with people (devs) angry and saying nobody should buy anymore TTG products.

  • 7 months later...
-HP-

-HP-

Posted
Posted

Oh yeah, I forgot we had a thread about this already and posted that video on the Walking Dead the series thread, my bad.

Watched it this morning and dude, after working in this industry for more than a decade now, all of this is just history repeating itself, way too familiar. Ultimately this is the nature of business, any business. Shit like this happens for a plethora of reasons, one of the bigger reasons being bad management and prioritizing growth over quality products.

Also, I see a lot of talk about unionization and I think I've said it before in here, I have no informed opinion on the matter, but if people think layoffs will end if unions rein over the industry, they're delusional.

  • 2 weeks later...

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