Telltale Studio Shutting Down

[Immortal Weapon]

Its true they didn't for sure. But with this Sony could have some easy money made and fix the process the company has. They could literally roll a few episodic games a year and do decent sales. I doubt we see a Wolf Among Us. But a Batman and Walking Dead game makes sense business wise to jump on and do it.

The pedigree of their work won't be enough. They need IPs to make the purchase of such a studio worth their while. IPs are hugely the reason why any major publisher buys a studio. Arguably Sony wouldn't even need them as they have Quantic Dream and Supermassive Games to produce those type of games. The latter studio doing it a whole lot better than Telltale ever did.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

The pedigree of their work won't be enough. They need IPs to make the purchase of such a studio worth their while. IPs are hugely the reason why any major publisher buys a studio. Arguably Sony wouldn't even need them as they have Quantic Dream and Supermassive Games to produce those type of games. The latter studio doing it a whole lot better than Telltale ever did.

To me that is the thing , pick up the scraps off Telltale , take the licenses and shift them to those studios. Hire some of the talented workers who have done the games and just create them in that style to finish them out.

I'm sure folks would demand they finish that 4th season of Walking Dead. Imagine if Sony stepped in and goes..."We have acquired the license to finish the 4th game from Telltale , as well as a few others.."

Sony would come across looking good . Course now the games become Exclusives to the system but well...It happens.

[Immortal Weapon]

To me that is the thing , pick up the scraps off Telltale , take the licenses and shift them to those studios. Hire some of the talented workers who have done the games and just create them in that style to finish them out.

I'm sure folks would demand they finish that 4th season of Walking Dead. Imagine if Sony stepped in and goes..."We have acquired the license to finish the 4th game from Telltale , as well as a few others.."

Sony would come across looking good . Course now the games become Exclusives to the system but well...It happens.

They got a skeleton crew finishing the Walking Dead. At least that project is good. As for the others, I don't think those are licenses Sony will be interested in. Batman and Wolf can go to Warner Bros since those are DC properties. I can see Guardians since they partnered with Marvel with Spider-Man.

[Panfoot]

They got a skeleton crew finishing the Walking Dead. At least that project is good. As for the others, I don't think those are licenses Sony will be interested in. Batman and Wolf can go to Warner Bros since those are DC properties. I can see Guardians since they partnered with Marvel with Spider-Man.

The 25 employees left are working on their Netflix Minecraft thing, though i'm sure not even all 25 of them left are actually developers, a decent chunk is probably administrative people closing everything out. Episode 2 has been completed and should release on time in a couple of days, but 3 wasn't finished and 4 wasn't even started. Game is dead at the half way point unfortunately.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

They got a skeleton crew finishing the Walking Dead. At least that project is good. As for the others, I don't think those are licenses Sony will be interested in. Batman and Wolf can go to Warner Bros since those are DC properties. I can see Guardians since they partnered with Marvel with Spider-Man.

The 25 employees left are working on their Netflix Minecraft thing, though i'm sure not even all 25 of them left are actually developers, a decent chunk is probably administrative people closing everything out. Episode 2 has been completed and should release on time in a couple of days, but 3 wasn't finished and 4 wasn't even started. Game is dead at the half way point unfortunately.

Yeah the Telltale crew would only do one episode of a game at a time and would take their time doing each chapter. The full game was supposed to go on sale November disc wise. But they would from what was learned was plot each chapter , give folks options to finish each one and then start the next one with those options selected.

[Panfoot]

Yeah the Telltale crew would only do one episode of a game at a time and would take their time doing each chapter. The full game was supposed to go on sale November disc wise. But they would from what was learned was plot each chapter , give folks options to finish each one and then start the next one with those options selected.

It wouldn't even be the full game in November, the final episode was originally slated for December 18th. The disc release would have just been the first episode on the disc and a code to download the rest of the season, a practice they have been doing for a while know. It's one of the more baffling decisions, not a clue what the point of selling a disc like that is. If 3/4ths of the game isn't on the disc...why not just get the full game as a download?

[SUPERECWFAN1]

It wouldn't even be the full game in November, the final episode was originally slated for December 18th. The disc release would have just been the first episode on the disc and a code to download the rest of the season, a practice they have been doing for a while know. It's one of the more baffling decisions, not a clue what the point of selling a disc like that is. If 3/4ths of the game isn't on the disc...why not just get the full game as a download?

Batman actually had this and was actually released halfway through the season (the last one). It was a practice I suppose to get as much cash as possible in and finish each series. We all should have realized that things weren't going well for the company once they went to this practice. That things wasn't going well.

[Sacred Knight]

This sucks. I love that they were somewhat reinvigorating the Adventure genre.

[Starter Set]

Sucks that so many people lose their jobs.

[Lammasu]

Sucks that so many people lose their jobs.

Oh it's even worse than that. I was reading this one article and some people started working a week ago. What the hell was managment doing?

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Oh it's even worse than that. I was reading this one article and some people started working a week ago. What the hell was managment doing?

Part of me believes Telltale was possibly trying to secure funding and thought they could keep running . So they'd hire folks and act like everything was gonna be ok. Then it didn't happen ...falling apart as we saw.

[Panfoot]

Part of me believes Telltale was possibly trying to secure funding and thought they could keep running . So they'd hire folks and act like everything was gonna be ok. Then it didn't happen ...falling apart as we saw.

Baseless speculation, but i'm guessing the higher ups thought maybe with the new Walking Dead game being the final one, being the ending to the story from their biggest success, just maybe the first episode sales would do incredibly well and save the company. Of course that turned out to not happen obviously, but you can kinda get a "the next one will be the big hit!" mentality when you look at how they operated and the rough estimates of how their games sold. Everything after Walking Dead Season 1 sold worse, and with every game it got a little worse, with the exception of Minecraft which had a decent bump, but they still just kept pumping out game after game on the same busted old engine that was already looking rough by the release of TWD Season 1.

I think a big part of it to was the episodic nature hurt more than it helped. There was little reason to buy any Telltale games as a season before the full thing was out, the biggest would probably be to stay in the conversation as the episodes came out. That only works when the game is actually being talked about though, and as more and more of their games got announced less people talked about them. Plus if you held out until the whole thing was out you could always get it on a pretty deep discount on a sale. Even as someone who enjoyed quite a lot of their games, the only ones I payed full price for and bought before being completed were the Walking Dead ones, didn't get, Wolf Among Us,Tales from the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and Batman Season 1 until later when there about 5 or 10 bucks(and even waited for Season 2 of Batman to finish and got it at half price), and never bothered with Guardians of the Galaxy or Minecraft.

[Immortal Weapon]

Part of me believes Telltale was possibly trying to secure funding and thought they could keep running . So they'd hire folks and act like everything was gonna be ok. Then it didn't happen ...falling apart as we saw.

The interviews that's coming from ex employees point to piss poor management for their demises. They grew too big too fast, it still had the indie company mentality when it was no longer an indie forcing all it's employees to crunch, taking on too many projects all while never evolving it's style and it's engine. Call of Duty changed more than Telltale ever did.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Baseless speculation, but i'm guessing the higher ups thought maybe with the new Walking Dead game being the final one, being the ending to the story from their biggest success, just maybe the first episode sales would do incredibly well and save the company. Of course that turned out to not happen obviously, but you can kinda get a "the next one will be the big hit!" mentality when you look at how they operated and the rough estimates of how their games sold. Everything after Walking Dead Season 1 sold worse, and with every game it got a little worse, with the exception of Minecraft which had a decent bump, but they still just kept pumping out game after game on the same busted old engine that was already looking rough by the release of TWD Season 1.

I think a big part of it to was the episodic nature hurt more than it helped. There was little reason to buy any Telltale games as a season before the full thing was out, the biggest would probably be to stay in the conversation as the episodes came out. That only works when the game is actually being talked about though, and as more and more of their games got announced less people talked about them. Plus if you held out until the whole thing was out you could always get it on a pretty deep discount on a sale. Even as someone who enjoyed quite a lot of their games, the only ones I payed full price for and bought before being completed were the Walking Dead ones, didn't get, Wolf Among Us,Tales from the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and Batman Season 1 until later when there about 5 or 10 bucks(and even waited for Season 2 of Batman to finish and got it at half price), and never bothered with Guardians of the Galaxy or Minecraft.

According to stories they hired new people a week before telling them they were shutting things down and laying them off. I have to think either 2 things happened...

- The 1st episode sales figures came in for Walking Dead season #4 and was lower than anyone imagined.

- Or the company had money suddenly disappear (possibly from trying to get a bank or investors to put more in).

The interviews that's coming from ex employees point to piss poor management for their demises. They grew too big too fast, it still had the indie company mentality when it was no longer an indie forcing all it's employees to crunch, taking on too many projects all while never evolving it's style and it's engine. Call of Duty changed more than Telltale ever did.

I already know this part , I'm giving a reason why they were hiring folks as recently as a week before this happened.

[BeastieRunner]

I am beyond sad about this.