Massive layoffs at Telltale Games put the future of The Walking Dead: The Final Season in doubt

The developer most commonly associated with episodic narrative games may not release its final episodes.

To the outside observer, it all happened quite suddenly. One minute, the Telltale Games account on Twitter was promising the Arby's account that "Telltale Games will remember that," and six hours later, the same account--perhaps now being operated by a different person at the company--was sharing the sad news that the company has laid off all but 25 of its employees.

The official notice the account shared reads as follows:

Today Telltale Games made the difficult decision to begin a majority 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 of 25 employees staying on to fulfill 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.

Telltale has recently been making efforts to expand its portfolio beyond the narrative games for which it was known. Its publishing arm published RGX Showdown, an online racer built by former leads at Criterion Software (Burnout) and Black Rock Studio (Split/Second) on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Early next month, it was set to publish Stranded Deep on Steam (as it departs Early Access), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Telltale Games laid off a total of between 225 and 250 employees today (around 90% of its staff) and has canceled virtually all of the future projects it had previously announced. The expectation from many reacting to the news was that the 25 employees remaining behind will work to complete The Walking Dead: The Final Season, which has been made available in the company's recently favored "Season Pass" format. One episode was already delivered, and the second one was due next week. Episodes three and four were to arrive and finish up the series by year's end.

Unfortunately, it now appears Telltale Games may instead be working to tend to obligations with Netflix, for the "Minecraft Story Mode" project, and will simply cease work on The Walking Dead: The Final Season (as reported by Game Informer and others). If this proves to be the case, it's unclear whether or not refunds will be available to those who purchased the season.

With a lot of talented people very suddenly out of work, apparently with no warning from senior management, the industry just received a sudden influx of available talent. Publishers such as Gearbox, Blizzard, Epic and many others have tweeted support at those affected, while noting that they're looking for talent right now. Here's hoping the people who lost their jobs today will land quickly on their feet and will be able to continue performing the work they love.

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Staff article by Jason Venter (September 21, 2018) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.