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The studio, which has been actively developing and releasing The Walking Dead: The Final Season, is reportedly down to just 25 employees. In early to mid-2017, over 300 people were said to be employed at the studio. And to those who may be confused, I'm not talking about 25% of the staff remaining. I'm talking about just 25 individuals.
The first episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season came out just last month. The second episode is still slated to be released next week.
Layoffs previously hit Telltale back in November 2017 when they had to layoff 25% of their employees. The latest layoffs come a few months after Telltale's former CEO and co-founder Kevin Bruner sued the company for an alleged breach of contract. In addition, there were some talks about how Telltale was a studio that was "mired in toxic management," including employees that were "subjected to constant overwork."
There are reports that the remaining 25 employees will finish work on The Walking Dead, after which the entire studio will be shut down.
Joe Parlock works for Forbes and I am inclined to trust his sources on this particular matter. He went on to say that Telltale almost didn't make it through Spring 2018 after a deal with Netflix fell apart.
We hope that all of the employees impacted by this manage to land on their feet.
UPDATE: Telltale has issued their own response minutes ago that confirms the unfortunate news. CEO Pete Hawley provided a 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."
Sigh, at least Mark Darin now has time to continue his projects at Pinhead Games. Haven't seen Nick Bounty in ages and that's finally coming back. Worth noting Mark "suddenly" has time post-Telltale as of August, so maybe he saw hints (I'll spare you the obvious puns since this isn't funny) that he wouldn't be able to stay for much longer? Quitting before the ship sinks?
What sucks even more is that we'll never see what they were going to do with the Unity engine... Or maybe we'll see the Stranger Things game if cancelling it would be a breach of contract.
Edit: Nope, laid off devs (without any severance) confirming both Wolf 2 and Stranger Things is cancelled. Basically it's just finish The Walking Dead (unsure if they meant the whole season or just a couple more episodes) and shut down. Nobody seems to say anything about Telltale Publishing though.
What really pisses me off is how Telltale had hires as recent as a week ago, and while I don't know how many, some (maybe one) relocated to work there. And now that their paycheque only covers a week, what the **** do those families do now?! Oh great let's fly back home with NO FREAKING MONEY! Oh right, I forgot we got rid of our old home too...
And the others who worked years? Well here's your paycheque for half of September, now **** off. Severance? What severance? We're bankrupt.