Popular game developer Telltale Games is reportedly shutting its doors soon, according to co-founder Kevin Bruner. This follows the large layoff of staff back in November 2017, as well as a lawsuit by the aforementioned co-founder. According to The Verge, more staff were laid off earlier today, leaving only a small team of 25 employees. Additionally, The Verge reports that the dismissed employees did not receive any severance pay.

Kevin Bruner has published a statement on his personal blog, reflecting his sorrow for the employees that lost their jobs.

Today, I’m mostly saddened for the people who are losing their jobs at a studio they love. And I’m also saddened at the loss of a studio that green-lit crazy ideas that no one else would consider. I’m comforted a bit knowing there are now so many new talented people and studios creating games in the evolving narrative genre. While I look forward to those games and new developments, and continuing to contribute, I will always find “A Telltale Game” to have been a unique offering.

Telltale Games most recently released the first episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season, with the second episode to release next week.

UPDATE: The official Telltale Games Twitter handle has released a statement.

pic.twitter.com/evqg5X98WZ

— Telltale (@telltalegames) September 21, 2018

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Kevin Bruner's blog post

The Verge report

 

[Viri]

Best visual novel coming through! How could Telltale even compete?! It even has a better battle system!

Spoiler

Spoiler

Touch fluffy tail?

 

[SonowRaevius]

Good riddance in my opinion, theses games were overhyped and overrated constantly despite having nearly 0 gameplay.

When you can get the same enjoyment from watching it on YouTube as playing, it has no right to be called a game it's an interactive movie at that point.

 

[SaffronXL]

Wow. They made a lot of mistakes, but I didn't think things were this bad. I will miss not getting to play/watch/whatever Wolf Among Us 2.

 

[Plstic]

the less walking sims the better.

 

[Rabbid4240]

Spai will remember that... Wait... No he won't...

 

[DuoForce]

Shame, was hoping they would make a Stranger Things game since the show is ass. Hopefully the Walking Dead gets completed and ported to the switch

 

[havip503]

Man I really love their games tho. I remember the time I almost cry because of Lee's death in TWD1.I just bought their mega telltale bundle when they on sale and havent finished all of them yet

 

[Taleweaver]

I sort of feared this would happen. They tried to produce more games than the (admitted: niche) market could handle. The result was worse quality, burned out developers and sales that didn't meet expectations. It 's too bad, but hopefully the devs will find better workplaces soon.

What I don't get is the toxicity in this thread. Is it really so hard to fathom that other people like other games? That also goes for that "it's like reading a book". Do you really need to be told that even if that were so, books are a form of entertainment as well?

I'm not the biggest fan of how Telltale made their games, I've only really played Back to the future and Monkey island , because I'm a real sucker for both series. I'm more concerned to what happens now to our digital purchases ? Are the removing the DRM from them? In the end I don't really care I guess.. Their version of monkey island always freezes for me , while a pirated copy doesn't... Maybe I should download all the stuff I own from them now..

Most if not all of their games are on gog.com. I don't think the games will disappear from the catalog, but it's certainly possible to download everything needed from the site (I played through the entire wolf among us without internet)

 

[Deleted User]

I hope they will still release the 2nd and 3rd season of TWD for the Switch.

well, this is unfortunate I really did enjoy playing Minecraft story mode. I remember playing through on my iPad mini 1 and having it kinda stutter along, but it worked. hope season 2 comes out for the switch. Some may not care but something might come up that could be better nobody really knows.

expecting a company on life support like this to go through the effort of releasing multiplatform games is a bit extreme, they'll probably just release what they have on steam then call it a day
remember, the consoles have a really big licensing fee to release your games, so they probably can't afford it

 

[zoogie]

Practically no one anywhere has mentioned this, but they also did Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People for WiiWare.
Really enjoyed that one.

Totally not a Homestar Runner fanboy.

 

[LightyKD]

I hope someone buys the assets and continues where TellTale left off. I LOVE this genre of game and now I'm disappointed by this closing I was really hoping for a Game of Thrones season 2. In all honesty even incomplete TV shows could breathe new life with this genre. I guess we still have Square Enix and the Life is Strange series.

 

[MrCokeacola]

And nothing of value was lost.

 

[Bladexdsl]

aw no no more sam and max and monkey isle...

 

[Xzi]

Jesus, what a flash in the pan developer these guys were. They got a deal to make a game for every major IP on television, and then they die out? I guess interest really fell off after people realized their games were basically multiple choice visual novels that resulted in two or three possible endings.

 

[Hyborix3]

Hype died out once I realised the overuse of terrible engine with bugs and so forth. I love TWD, but they dragged it too long and Season 1 is still the best IMO. I’ve also played GoT and the amounts of bugs I’ve experienced was staggering and even the art style looks “meh” with the wax look. I hope in the future, other game companies will do better choice style of games better. (Not QuanticDreams) Also, never seen the appeal of Life is Strange so I hope there’s something different in the future.

 

[pedro702]

these point and click games never do much money so no wonder an entire studio around that goes bankrupt, if they had normal games and then made some of those here and there they would have more money in the bank.

 

[Bimmel]

I'm really sad. All those people did a great job bringing these worlds alive. "Nothing of value was lost?" Think again. Yeah, gameplay was stale and sometimes boring, but the writing was nice for the most part.

And damn, what will happen to AJ? Now we will never know what Clementine will do after he did what he did..

 

[pedro702]

I'm really sad. All those people did a great job bringing these worlds alive. "Nothing of value was lost?" Think again. Yeah, gameplay was stale and sometimes boring, but the writing was nice for the most part.

And damn, what will happen to AJ? Now we will never know what Clementine will do after he did what he did..

the problem is the games didn't even looked like games, they were basically tv shows with afew clicks here and there so you get 2 or 3 different endings.

that is a very niche market for visual novels really you cant make an entire studio live off a very niche market while doing nothing else, if they made other type of games too then it could have lived imo.

 

[VitaType]

Maybe now all of them can make what they obviously always wanted to do: Work in the film industry.
I'm not surprised that a company which tries to make adventure games without any notable puzzles dosn't work out.
It neither helped that they just pretended that any of your decision have any effect on the story at all. Yes, it costs alot of money to at least pull of something like with Fate of Atlantis back then or even something like Heavy Rain did, but if you pretend your decision would make any difference at the end then you better make it happen.

these point and click games never do much money so no wonder an entire studio around that goes bankrupt, if they had normal games and then made some of those here and there they would have more money in the bank.

What they released in the last years wasn't Point'n'Click-Adventures, it was just I-want-to-be-a-film-Quick-Time-Event trash.

 

[LittleFlame]

Guess they're retiring more than just their engine