There are days in the video game world where all is well and everything is just sunshine and rainbows, not unlike those rainbow flags in the recently released Spider-Man game.
Sadly, today isn’t one of those days.
Telltale Games, makers of those great point-and-click adventure games such as The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Tales of the Borderlands, announced that it is laying off a majority of its 250 employee workforce in what is described as a “majority studio closure“.
— The Walking Dead Game (@telltalegames) September 21, 2018
The studio announced that all of its upcoming games have been canceled and only a small team of 25 employees will remain onboard to complete contracted work on Minecraft: Story Mode for Netflix.
This is sad news for all those fans who have been eagerly waiting for titles such as the second season of The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, and Tales of the Borderlands.
But perhaps the most heartbreaking part of this announcement (in addition to a couple hundred of talented and hard-working people suddenly losing their jobs and not receiving any severance pay) is that we won’t get a proper conclusion to The Walking Dead nor will be get that announced Stranger Things game.
The final season of The Walking Dead was launched in August with a planned four-episode run, but it appears that the game will be prematurely cut short when episode two is released on September 25, robbing us all of a definitive ending to Clementine’s story.
As for the Stranger Things game, no one knows just how far long in development that game was but the fact that we’ll never get it just sucks on so many levels.
This announcement is the latest setback in what’s been a tumultuous 12 months for Telltale. The studio had laid off 90 employees last November in an attempt to restructure everything to keep things going.
It’s a sad end to what was a thriving video game studio but it goes to show that everyone isn’t immune to the pressures of the industry.
My heart also goes out to all those poor employees who were laid off from Telltale. You’re all super talented and were at the forefront of some truly groundbreaking games, and I have no doubt that you all will find a new job elsewhere.