Telltale Games, the Videogame Studio Behind the Walking Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy, Fables, and Batman, Has Massive Layoffs

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Brett

Rumors have been swirling all day as to something going on at Telltale Games. Those rumors began with posts from employees and former employees on social media and ran from massive layoffs to the entire studio shutting down.

The company has put out the following statement:

Today Telltale Games made the difficult decision to begin a major studio closure following a year marked by insurmountable challenges. A majority of the company’s employees were dismissed earlier this morning, with a small group fo 25 employees staying on to fullfill the company’s obligations to its board and partners. CEO Pete Hawley issued the following statement:

“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.”

Telltale will issue further comments regarding its product portfolio in the coming weeks.

The video game studio was behind popular video games such as The Walking Dead, Batman, Fables, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more. The games have a focus on storytelling over button mashing and recently the publisher announced their popular The Walking Dead video game would be coming to Nintendo’s Switch with the first part released recently.

There are numerous games still to be released and completed and it’s unknown at this time as to what their fate will be.

The 200-250 employees laid off will not be receiving severance pay after the layoffs with a few turning to social media venting their anger over that and lack of compensation for overtime to ship games on time. Comments from employees also indicate they were given just 30 minutes to leave the studio after being told they were laid off.

We expect further news from the studio as to the future of its portfolio in the coming weeks.