Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

This studio closure hits a little close to me, since I know a few former employees:<p>- They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable.<p>- They were in the planning stages for an original IP, their new leadership realized too late that expensive IP licenses were unsustainable.<p>- Their frantic development pace meant that they their engine was a patchwork of features cobbled together over the years, and not enough resources to rework it, despite their audiences stating that they didn&#x27;t care enough to fix it. This made development a lot more painful than it should have been. They finally ditched it for Unity, but again, much too late.<p>- They were getting ready to move into a new office building. That&#x27;s how in the dark everyone at the company was kept.<p>- All of these actions were caused by incompetent management, their staff was and still is amazingly talented.

I wonder how much the closure was financial mismanagement vs their business model simply catching up to them.<p>TTG shtick was essentially “emotional abuse simulators” all their games had one trick get you attached to characters and see them die with very little actual player control over it.<p>They were one trick pony and the novelty wore off rather quickly.<p>Their games also were based on expensive franchises and they often offered the first chapter for free in order to hook people in.<p>They also never really developed their formula further the games didn’t became more interactive the same quick time events over and over that never really changed the overall story more than which one of these two will die and or betray you later.<p>I’m actually surprised that they lasted this long given how expensive it is to develop these games even if they weren’t technically impressive recording hours and hours of voice acting is much more expensive than shiny coding shaders.

&quot;One employee, a source told Kotaku, had been working until 3 AM the night before&quot; Moral of the story, never work for any company until 3am.

This sounds very similar to the layoffs that happened with ML and computer vision staff at Shutterstock. I heard it was a super unprofessional sudden thing, poor severance, no continuation of benefits, happening to teams that just had been praised for being high performers for short term business critical product deployments.<p>It’s not a gaming industry thing, and no job segments are safe from this kind of thing. Just a reminder to insist on a clearly stated severance package when you join, and walk away if an employer won’t offer that to you, no matter what you think about your personal leverage in the situation or your seniority or anything else. When it comes to generous severance that is stated in the employment agreement, do not take no for an answer.

People are blaming mismanagement, bad licensing terms etc., and while that all may be true, it is also worth noting that Telltale has not released anything <i>really</i> worth playing since The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. No studio will survive after releasing ~12 bad to average games in a row over 4 years.

I was fortunate (or unfortunate) in my career that the first company I work for was acquired and a massive company wide layoff followed, which woke me up from the Koolaid on dedicating my life to the companies I work for, and I would never let any company determine my fate.

This sort of thing makes me very glad I live in a country with legally guaranteed employee entitlements and public healthcare.

Is severance normal at a startup or a game studio? I would think first priority would be contractual obligations (payroll, contractual severance, vendors, etc.) and then only then severance.

Adventure games seems to be a segment that is especially prone to boom and bust cycles. This has to be at least the third major collapse, following Infocom and LucasArts.<p>Even when well executed, the formula is hard to keep fresh, and the emphasis on story and writing leads to generally poor replayability. Particularly now, in the youtube&#x2F;twitch age - most of the enjoyment of these kinds of games is watching the story play out, rather than actually playing the game.

The point of severance is to give ex-employees a reason not to sue.<p>However there is left point in protecting from lawsuits when there will be nothing left that can be sued.<p>However I suspect that not paying out owed PTO may be a different story...

I feel bad for the employees. Getting laid off sucks, I hope they all have better jobs soon.<p>In terms of TTG as a company, they got what they asked for. It&#x27;s too bad it didn&#x27;t happen before they hired their first non founders.<p>I&#x27;d been watching TTG since before they had a name. The rumors were that the devs from the cancelled Sam &amp; Max game left Lucas to make a Sam &amp; Max game. This was second only to Star Wars for me at the time.<p>I bought it as soon as a physical copy came out. (I don&#x27;t remember if episodes came on disc or if I had to wait for the season). TTG had built DRM into the game that prevented you from using it in a virtual machine. TTG&#x27;s website had made it sound like the DRM wouldn&#x27;t prevent anyone with a physical copy from playing.<p>I contacted TTG. Their rep seemed to be reading of some BS script. He was condescending. He treated me like I didn&#x27;t know what I was talking about for not wanting to use wine or dual boot. I returned the game to the store* and acquired a copy that had been patched to repair the DRM. After that, if TTG came up in a conversation I made sure to give the person a heads up that they&#x27;d just need to pirate it anyway.<p>* This was a small store, their policy defined games rendered unplayable by DRM as defective. This policy caused them to not carry future TTG games.

I might be misreading&#x2F;misinterpreting..what was the reason for the closure? The article mentions it was financial but it didn’t seem absolute.

They have quite a few jobs open: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;telltale.com&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;telltale.com&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;</a>

This remind me that I&#x27;ve been meaning to pick up the Guardians of the Galaxy TT game, because I like the comics and the movies, but each time I Watch a gameplay video, I go completly meh, it just look so clunky and boring to play. I understand the appeal of those game is not supposed to be in the gameplay part of the game, but in that case, they should have done directly a visual novel instead.

Anyone know what the unemployment benefits are like in CA?<p>In WA state, &quot;Unemployment benefits are made available through taxes paid by your former employer(s) to partially replace your regular earnings and help you meet expenses while you look for another job.&quot;<p>Not sure what the situation is in CA but I&#x27;d hope that, in the absence of a severance package, there&#x27;s something else that can help them land cleanly here...

If you think about employment as a business transaction, then you should insist on &quot;Cash Up Front&quot;, e.g. signing bonus, higher salary, or immediate stock ownership to offset your personal risk. Joining a company is more of a risk to you as an employee than it is to them in hiring you.<p>Basically it comes down to asking for &quot;Cash Up Front&quot;. Expecting a cash settlement on the backend of a failed business transaction is fraught with perils of not getting your investment back in the company. And asking for severance is no different.

This type of stuff happened a lot during the dotcom bust. It seemed like good times would last forever. People would get hired with great salary, options, benefits, etc and fly across the country to start their new jobs only to find the business had shut down. It&#x27;s insane. These companies would hold job interviews and hire people knowing full well they are about to go close shop.

Man, the gaming industry is crazy.

The worst part for many of these people is that our country still links health insurance with your employer. It is bad enough to suddenly lose your job and primary source of income, but that type of thing is often unavoidable when a company goes belly up. However only getting a week&#x27;s notice before all your health insurance benefits disappear is the type of thing that just shouldn&#x27;t happen in this country.