Sad news hit the Internet last night, as it was revealed that Telltale Games had not only laid off a large number of employees, but that the company was effectively finished after suffering from financial hardship. Needless to say, it hit the gaming community hard, first because of the massive amount of lost jobs, then because of what the developer’s closure means for its well liked series.
At first, it was just stated that future releases (like The Wolf Among Us: Season 2 and Stranger Things) had been cancelled, but that wasn’t the entirety of it. An hour or two later, we also learned that The Walking Dead: The Final Season has also effectively been cancelled, which is a shame for those involved as well as its many fans. According to reports, we won’t be seeing how Clementine’s story comes to an end, and will instead only receive the first two of four planned episodes from this concluding arc. The second episode was scheduled to come out next week, and it apparently still will.
It’s been said that a skeleton crew of about 25 people remains, to work on a Minecraft project for Netflix. There will apparently be no more video games from Telltale, though, which is a shame. Say what you will about their dated engine or how many projects they took on at once, the games were usually rather good and brought an interesting viewpoint to their properties. That was especially true of The Walking Dead, Tales From the Borderlands, Batman and The Wolf Among Us.
The worst part of all of this, of course, happens to be the lost jobs. According to former employees, who are now looking for new gigs and have been contacted by other studios that have been generous enough to lend a hand, close to 250 people lost their employment. Although we can’t say for certain, what’s been said also indicates that the company had been hiring people up to one week ago, and that one person had even traveled across the country for the job. Tweets further suggest that these folks were left with no severance and will lose their benefits in a week, which is an absolute shame.
We here at Eggplante wish the best to all of those who unexpectedly and suddenly lost their jobs at Telltale Games. It’s a sad event, and something we hope that everyone involved will rebound from quickly. We will, of course, also miss their games.