A series of social media posts from recently laid-off developers lead many to believe that Telltale Games was shutting down yesterday morning, but the lights will remain on for now according to an official statement from the company’s executives.
Writing on Twitter, Telltale CEO Pete Hawley confirmed that a majority of the company’s employees would be let go:
“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.”
Hawley would go on to say that “further comments regarding [Telltale’s] product portfolio [will be announced] in the coming weeks,” but sources within the company told USgamer that the majority of their in-development projects have been canceled.
The Walking Dead: The Final Season‘s second episode, Suffer the Children, will launch next week as originally planned, but the remaining two episodes will likely go unfinished, marking an abrupt end for the season and the franchise. A further list of cancellations includes Game of Thrones Season 2, The Wolf Among Us Season 2, and the recently-announced Stranger Things game.
The 25 employees still under Telltale’s employ will stay on to complete the Netflix-powered port of Minecraft: Story Mode, but it is currently unknown what will happen to them after that.
It’s our hope that all of Telltale’s former employees will be able to quickly find better employment opportunities in the future.
