Former Telltale CEO sues company for "breach of contract"

telltale games.jpg

Things haven't been easy for Telltale Games Studio, makers of The Walking Dead game series, Minecraft: Story Mode, The Wolf Among Us, and more. Last year, the company had to fire 25% of its team. Earlier this year, they also delayed one of their major upcoming games, The Wolf Among Us Season 2. Now, the ex-CEO and original co-founder of the company, Kevin Bruner, is trying to take Telltale to court, stating that the development company removed him from its Board of Directors without a fair vote, and slowly cut off communication with him. Telltale has hired lawyers to fight this claim, saying that Bruner has no ground to stand on for this case, and that he's extracting revenge on an already strained studio. When the suit reached a judge, the case wasn't thrown out like Telltale had hoped. An investigation will occur this July, with a case management conference scheduled for July 17.

:arrow: Source
 

VitaType

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Jul 16, 2016
Messages
1,043
Trophies
0
XP
1,457
Country
Germany
I'm not a big fan of covering this kind of news before something is settled to be honest. This news isn't really important in the sense that anyone here would/should change the behaviour towards that company until everything is investigated, yet some people will connect this negative news to the company even if it turns out that what Kevin Bruner accuses Telltale for isn't true.
I hope you made a note about reporting a front-page news here once the judgment is done :)

Didn't knew Telltale has such large financial problems. There games shouldn't cost that much to make (compared to AAA games), yet I heard so many people positively speak about this games. :O
 

Chary

Never sleeps
OP
Chief Editor
Joined
Oct 2, 2012
Messages
12,334
Trophies
4
Age
27
Website
opencritic.com
XP
128,056
Country
United States
I'm not a big fan of covering this kind of news before something is settled to be honest. This news isn't really important in the sense that anyone here would/should change the behaviour towards that company until everything is investigated, yet some people will connect this negative news to the company even if it turns out that what Kevin Bruner accuses Telltale for isn't true.
I hope you made a note about reporting a front-page news here once the judgment is done :)

Didn't knew Telltale has such large financial problems. There games shouldn't cost that much to make (compared to AAA games), yet I heard so many people positively speak about this games. :O
Me either, but with upcoming announced games at E3 like Stranger Things by Telltale, and the upcoming side stories to Minecraft Story Mode, and Wolf Among Us, coupled with how the company is struggling (which was revealed by the lawyer today, and I dont think it was public knowledge before), I think it's interesting enough for discussion. I'll of course make another thread later when the proceedings are over.
 

Joe88

[λ]
Global Moderator
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
12,736
Trophies
2
Age
36
XP
7,407
Country
United States
Wasnt aware all this was going on, thought they were doing well because of all the tv commercials I saw for the TWD because indie studios cant usually afford tv time.
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,284
Country
United Kingdom
I am never sure what to make of these sorts of things. Like a few years back various execs in one place were caught completely red faced, pants around ankles, hand in proverbial cookie jar, bag of swag over their shoulder... and fired as you might expect. However while never they never contested the inappropriate dealings said firing was not done "properly" so they sued and won a settlement.

As game company CEOs tend not to care about games, instead being a CEO as one is seemingly expected to be, then I am wary. I shall await the results.

As far as reporting on it then something which speaks to the state of a company like that I absolutely want to know about.
 

Foxi4

Endless Trash
Global Moderator
Joined
Sep 13, 2009
Messages
30,818
Trophies
3
Location
Gaming Grotto
XP
29,789
Country
Poland
I like TellTale games, in fact, the "interactive story" genre is one of my favourite ways to "chill out", but let's be serious here. If your studio repeatedly lands contracts for the world's largest IP's including, but not limited to, Batman, The Walking Dead, Minecraft and Borderlands, manages to quickly make and release critically-acclaimed and best-selling games on just about all the platforms available, including consoles, PC and mobile, and you still have to lay off a quarter of your staff, your company is grossly mismanaged and you probably need to be taken down a peg or two. TellTale should be swimming in dough, they have no excuse. If anything, they do need to hire a CEO - someone from the outside who knows how to manage money. Making good games is all well and good, but you can't make any once you fire everyone and the coffers are empty.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AdamFX990

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,284
Country
United Kingdom
While I don't necessarily disagree, and opt for a rather Darwinistic approach when it comes to nice luxury entertainment industries, I would at least have to point at the history of such things and ponder. In this case such licensing deals tend not to be all that favourable for the little guy (between no merch and companies these days actually recognising games as something worth doing right and commonly coming with high payback then yeah), and game design is something of a race to outbid each other industry (there are some nice case studies with special/visual effects houses in more conventional video, to say nothing of all the other creative fields doing a "keep the lights on"/subsistence style gig over the... millennia).
 

lincruste

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2008
Messages
375
Trophies
1
Location
france
XP
1,185
Country
Antarctica
Trivias: developper Ben Ingram who made the Telltale Games engine is the same Ben Ingram who published the incredible NeoDS emulator back in the days.
He used hardware texture mapping on triangles to emulate Neo Geo sprites and achieved an amazing 80% of full speed on this 4 MB ram, 66/33 MHz arm cpus handheld from 2004.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Subtle Demise

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    A @ anotherthing: The Nintendo servers are going down in 9 days anyway.