Telltale Games has been one of the fastest growing studios since it was erected back in 2004. The company has seen even more growth after their first hit on the mobile game, The Walking Dead that was released back in 2012. The game was announced as Spike Video Game Awards’ game of the year. That’s the time when the company grew exponentially increasing from under 100 people to over 250 people! However, in 2017 the company met a downfall which forced them to layoff 90 of their staffs.
Heeeeyyyy remember how there was going to be a skeleton crew staying on for a while and I was part of it? Nah, jk, we all just got laid off, too.
— Retchel Necronoelicon (@anameformyself) October 4, 2018
In March, reports of the company was made known of its toxic management which have led their staffs and developers to burn out – working more than 100 hours a week! With the latest news in September, they were apparently laying off more now and counting up to 250 staffs in October, leaving the skeleton crew working on the last episode of the highly acclaimed The Walking Dead: The Final Season. With the lack of man-power, Telltale Games have no choice but to seek help from third-party studios to complete The Final Season.
We’re SO happy to announce that we’ve reached a deal with @telltalegames that will allow Skybound to continue #TheWalkingDead: The Final Season! Let’s wrap up Clem’s story right! More details to come soon. pic.twitter.com/ShyREw65iq
— Skybound Games (@skyboundgames) October 7, 2018
Thankfully for fans, Skybound Games was there to take on the project to help Telltale Games complete The Final Season. However amidst all these, fans and former staffs of Telltale Games had voiced out on Twitter on another issue – the laid off staffs had no severance. Telltale Games not giving severance to their laid off employees and instead focusing on completing The Final Season only add fuel to the fire on top of their toxic management. As some took it to Twitter to bring light on that issue where humanity and morals were included on how Telltale Games is treating the issue.
Clementine will always be like a daughter to the teams of 100’s of people that ‘raised’ her since 2012. But those people have REAL kids. Real mouths to feed, and they need to be fed FIRST before the fans. #Telltale250 https://t.co/ANcvqZEehJ
— Job J Stauffer (@jobjstauffer) September 25, 2018
Seriously. That team is more important than Clementine. Sorry fans, it’s true. The health & well-being of 250 of the BEST people I’ve EVER worked with is more important than the end of Clem’s story. Maybe RK can finish her story on the show or the comic. People need severance! https://t.co/4D4c3LpkhZ
— Job J Stauffer (@jobjstauffer) September 25, 2018
Even Cory Balrog, the man that brought us 2018’s God of War recently voiced out as well. For some who doesn’t know, Cory is among one of the most vocal supporters of healthy working conditions in the game industry.
I would hope this means that you will first pay your entire team their severance, and then proceed to finish the final episodes. I would be fine waiting however long it took to ensure we first treated those who worked so hard with the humanity and respect they deserve.❤️
— Cory Barlog 🎮 🏳️🌈 Should be writing! (@corybarlog) September 25, 2018
With all these comments circulating the net, this will only bring the news to light for fans of Telltale’s The Walking Dead series. We hope that the executives of Telltale Games could come up with a solution to give severance to the staffs first before putting importance on finishing the game just to satisfy their fans. Hopefully, fans would also agree to this and could convince the studio to just drop it and treat their former employees with fairness before they get even more damage onto their reputations.
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