Telltale Games is Shutting Down

[SniperHF]

Sources: Telltale Games Closes Majority of Studio, The Wolf Among Us 2 and Stranger Things Canceled [Update, Correction]

I figured they'd hold on longer, but I'm not surprised. They could never manage the declining sales of their various series without retooling which it seems they never did and instead let the bubble burst.

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[Hockeyfrilla]

the f***??? they wont finish the final season of walking dead..............

 

[SeidoN]

No end to Walking Dead sucks. No more Wolf Among Us and Batman blows too

 

[Osprey]

I liked their work in the early days of Sam 'n' Max, Wallace & Gromit and Tales of Monkey Island, when they simply modernized the old school point-and-click adventure games. I lost interest shortly after that, when they seemed to move more towards "narrative adventures" (less gameplay; more cinematics) based on popular film and TV licenses. It felt to me like they started picking franchises because of the guarantee of sales rather than because they were inspired to make great games based on them. Despite my disinterest, they helped bring adventure games back and make them popular again, so this news is unfortunate. Hopefully, it really is due to mismanagement and isn't an early sign of another adventure game recession.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

That's a bummer. I enjoyed all the games I've played from them (first two Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, first Batman, and Wolf Among Us.) I'm not surprised though. Episodic games are pretty annoying and when they usually celebrate finishing the game by putting it on a big discount, you're just going to get a lot of people who wait for the finished product and pay less for it. All those licenses must have been pretty expensive too.

 

[quoipourquoi]

I didn’t even know they were in bad shape. Having Batman, Wolf Among Us, and Borderlands on my iPad has gotten me through so many train rides. What a bummer.

 

[The Head Crusher]

This sucks, I really wanted another Game of Thrones

 

[Commander Clueless]

That sucks.

I know they lacked innovation, but I really enjoyed what they did with the Batman series.

Borderlands was pretty good too.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Good serves them right for never making a second season for Game of Thrones.

There are literally no Game of Thrones games and they could have made a killing in it but were too busy milking Walking dead which has been dead for years...and now they are bankrupted.

 

[Blitzkrug]

Sounds like they spread themselves thin. All those licenses + needing to hire more people to make multiple games meant more money was going out than in.

I thought a lot of those games were garbage outside of Tales From the Borderlands and Wolf Among Us.

 

[PeterSidorkiewicz]

Sounds like they spread themselves thin. All those licenses + needing to hire more people to make multiple games meant more money was going out than in.

I thought a lot of those games were garbage outside of Tales From the Borderlands and Wolf Among Us.

The only game I played from then was the GoT One and for the Most part I loved it.

 

[Cor]

So will people who bought the entire season of TWD get refunds?

 

[SniperHF]

So will people who bought the entire season of TWD get refunds?

Is there money to refund with?
I think that would be a big problem. They are supposedly staying open to finish a port but that's probably contractually set and the money for that is locked up there otherwise they'd just be breaching something else.

Since they are their own publisher I don't think there's a bigger fish the owners could go after.

 

[Kcb12345]

This sucks how they aren't finishing the walking dead game. This close to the end too.

Edit: Sounds like that report might be fake. No one knows for sure yet

 

[RandV]

Good serves them right for never making a second season for Game of Thrones.

There are literally no Game of Thrones games and they could have made a killing in it but were too busy milking Walking dead which has been dead for years...and now they are bankrupted.

There is literally a strategy and an RPG Game of Thrones game available

 

[Bjorn Le]

Sounds like they spread themselves thin. All those licenses + needing to hire more people to make multiple games meant more money was going out than in.

I thought a lot of those games were garbage outside of Tales From the Borderlands and Wolf Among Us.

Their problem was they had way too many people. Before the first layoffs last year that had 340 employees. That is WAY too much for a company that apparently had massive production inefficiencies and an unmotivated work staff.

 

[guinness]

Their problem was they had way too many people. Before the first layoffs last year that had 340 employees. That is WAY too much for a company that apparently had massive production inefficiencies and an unmotivated work staff.

From the comments on ars, reddit, they said they're employees were in crunch mode all the time, which no matter how much you like you're job, you need a work/life balance.

 

[The Head Crusher]

There is literally a strategy and an RPG Game of Thrones game available

Which one is the strategy? The only one that comes to my mind is the CKII mod for it, which is the primary version of CKII that I play.

 

[crowi]

Makes sense. Their games have taken a huge nosedive after Wolf Among Us imo. I have had no interest at all in their games after that. Never thought the walking dead games were good either.

 

[crowi]

If you want a better telltale game than telltale games make, you should try Until Dawn on PS4.

Edit: didn't mean to double post.

 

[RandV]

Which one is the strategy? The only one that comes to my mind is the CKII mod for it, which is the primary version of CKII that I play.

A Game of Thrones: Genesis

Came out in 2011 and probably never heard of it because it was a hot mess. The CKII mod was exponentially better.

 

[The Head Crusher]

A Game of Thrones: Genesis

Came out in 2011 and probably never heard of it because it was a hot mess. The CKII mod was exponentially better.

It is pretty awesome.

 

[GlassesJacketShirt]

Sounds like they spread themselves thin. All those licenses + needing to hire more people to make multiple games meant more money was going out than in.

I thought a lot of those games were garbage outside of Tales From the Borderlands and Wolf Among Us.

Especially when these games probably ended up competing against each other. My experience with their games is they tended to be carbon copies of each other in gameplay structure, so it came down to picking your poison.

 

[Bjorn Le]

From the comments on ars, reddit, they said they're employees were in crunch mode all the time, which no matter how much you like you're job, you need a work/life balance.

That’s what I meant by inefficiencies. Permenant crunch time means that work isn’t being done effective, even if people are working insane hours. Pressure is a short term motivator it doesn’t work if all you do is pressure.

Telltale was making games that could have been done with a fraction of the team they had (much smaller developers put out bigger games then them). That tells me management was clueless

 

[The Crypto Guy]

If you want a better telltale game than telltale games make, you should try Until Dawn on PS4.

Edit: didn't mean to double post.

Game was amazing.