What a terrible way to start the weekend. Telltale Games, makers of The Walking Dead, Tales from the Borderlands, The Wolf Among Us, and more, are laying off the majority of their staff, canceling projects, and filing for bankruptcy according to a post on Gamasutra.com. The details are as follows:
- The studio has filed for bankruptcy and will be shutting down.
- Only about 25 of the studio’s ~250 employees are being kept on to finish the final season of The Walking Dead.
- The highly anticipated Wolf Among Us 2 and all other future projects are canceled.
Studio CEO Pete Hawley made the following statement:
“It’s been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale as we worked to set the company on a new course. Unfortunately, we ran out of time trying to get there. We released some of our best content this year and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, but ultimately, that did not translate to sales. With a heavy heart, we watch our friends leave today to spread our brand of storytelling across the games industry.”
Our Take
Oh no. We hate to see studio closures and this is one of the worst we’ve seen in a long time now. Sadly, there have been reports about mis-management inside of Telltale Games for a long time and they are currently facing a lawsuit by former CEO Kevin Bruner. Regardless, this impacts a large number of developers and we just hope they can find work quickly. Best of luck to them.