Despite releasing several critically acclaimed and massively popular games to its name, apparently, it wasn’t all fun and games at Telltale Games. Rumors of troubles within the company have been going around for some time now, but it wasn’t until they made an official statement about the mass layoff that we have confirmation that they are in deep trouble. Only a handful of employees remain but they are only there to wrap things up for the game developer and its partners.
In an official statement posted on Twitter on Saturday, the company says that majority of the company’s employees were let go that morning as part of their “majority studio closure”. The 25 remaining employees are only there to “fulfill the company’s obligations” towards their business partners and the company’s board. Sources say they were only given half an hour to vacate the office and worse, they will not receive any severance pay.
— Telltale Games (@telltalegames) September 21, 2018
CEO Pete Hawley said in the statement that they tried to bring the company to a different direction but they “ran out of time” to fix things to get there. Despite the positive feedback on the games that they released especially this year, it didn’t really translate to sales which is the bottomline of any business after all. They have previously released games like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Within, Batman: The Enemy Within, and Minecraft: Story Mode, which have been receiving great reviews.
But there have also been reports since early this year that trouble has been brewing within the company because of things like poor (even toxic) management and that a lot of employees were severely overworked. If you go down the Twitter rabbit hole, you’ll see some tweets from former workers that this closure is a good thing because nothing is worth giving up your mental health for.
Meanwhile, most reactions have been about how sad they were that they will not be able to finish their games or see sequels to their favorite ones. Hopefully the talented people that worked at Telltale Games will be able to work with other game development companies and hopefully, in a much healthier environment.
VIA: SlashGear
