Gaming News

J. Marston

That's sad. Walking Dead season 1, Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands were the real standouts.

Don't suppose they could sell the rights to TWAU for season 2?

CastorTroy

Surprised to hear. But I guess something had to give with all the projects they were taking on.
Assumed they were doing well but I suppose when all their games are bargain prices or given away for free pretty soon after the final episode releases, they can't be doing that well.

johnny_ultimate

Terrible for all involved, although sadly not an entirely surprising development.

It was a studio that did some pretty remarkable things with The Walking Dead S1 (a flawed but undoubtedly important game in mainstream game storytelling) and a few scattered gems after that... but it stretched itself too thin creatively. Very quickly it became a studio churning out variations on a theme without expanding and evolving the good ideas they made their name with. Such a shame... I think if they hadn’t rushed to make as many games as they could and instead gave more time and space to titles, it could have been a different story altogether.

ERG89

They just had too many pots on too few hobs the last few years.
Often you felt dips in episodes where you just knew that they were moving staff between projects. Batman, Tales from the Borderlands were decent but Guardians of the Galaxy and Game of Thrones were bad.
I enjoyed Batman & Sam and Max too; I know the games weren't for everyone but they were great to play on an evening you're tired.
I hope that the games don't disappear off online stores as I have most of them on Steam & PSN

K.O.Kiki

ERG89 wrote: »

They just had too many pots on too few hobs the last few years.
Often you felt dips in episodes where you just knew that they were moving staff between projects. Batman, Tales from the Borderlands were decent but Guardians of the Galaxy and Game of Thrones were bad.
I enjoyed Batman & Sam and Max too; I know the games weren't for everyone but they were great to play on an evening you're tired.
I hope that the games don't disappear off online stores as I have most of them on Steam & PSN

Pretty sure you don't lose games you own licenses to, they just become unavailable for purchase to anyone else.

But you should be looking at buying on GOG.com since it's DRM-free on that platform.

super_furry

Sad for the people involved but the ran that formula and the engine into the ground. I played and loved the first season of the Walking Dead but nothing else every captured my interest like that one and it felt like diminishing returns with every other game they came out with.

Even with the engine they supposedly ungraded for the Batman it still stuttered on current gen consoles. So what they'll go into publishing ? I saw an email form them yesterday announcing the release of Stranded Deed fro PS4 and Xbox which is a 3 year old pc game.

Like others I feel for those who lost their job but even the dog on the street could have told them they went to the well way too often on the formula they had especially after Life is Strange arrived and showed what could be done with the formula . Thanks for introducing me to the Fables comics but good riddance to them.

Dave_The_Sheep

I loved the games but let's be honest, one shot pony.

Story is, 25 people left behind to finish the unfinished latest game.

Those people won't give two flying ****s.

J. Marston

And now apparently The Walking Dead's final season is cancelled too. In a final insult, the skeleton crew is being kept on to finish Minecraft story mode for Netflix. They sold the game as a whole too, not individual episodes like the past so people aren't getting what they paid for.

https://twitter.com/LawofTD/status/1043278296396357633

What a grubby ending for poor Clem!

gazzamc

Telltales quality has been dropping with recent games anyway..

gizmo

The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games reportedly lays off the majority of its staff

Since then, a report from The Verge, compiled from multiple insider sources, has claimed that a skeleton staff of 25 people will remain in work at Telltale for the time being, with all other employees dismissed with no severance pay.

Forgive me while I ****ing vomit.

Zero-Cool

Oh my god, they don't even get to finish their gem the walking dead, that is ****ing awful. One of the writers said the silver lining is your fanfic can now become canon . It's nice to see other Devs reaching out with writing opportunities.

Grumpypants

Highlights again just how hard it is to make games. Very few companies do it successfully for a long time. Telltale fit a niche market but probably overloaded it and trained their players to buy later at discounted prices. The poor sales of the new TWD being the final nail.

Zero-Cool

I wonder if this is in relation to the fact you couldn't buy episodes individually for the final episode. The preorder bonus for the final season of TWD was you get the while TWD series bundle which is class but I had them already and wanted to buy episode by episode. Only found out on launch that you had to buy the season to get access to episode 1. Really pissed me off, very shady thing to do. I wonder if the execs knew this was coming and trying to get as much money as possible before the news broke.

Penn

Saw a tweet this morning from someone whose boyfriend left his job at Microsoft to go work for Telltale games... earlier this week. They were still hiring new people as of this week even though senior management likely knew this was going to happen. Now he's been laid off.

The company did put out some great games, TWD1, TWAU and TFTB being particular highlights for me. But the management of the company seemed to be disastrous from the get-go. They needlessly took on way too many projects (even recently they were going to be doing a Stranger Things game, and there was no need whatsoever for a GoT game) and the release of some games were shockingly slow.

Zero-Cool

Does anyone know how the money works when a company shuts down, as in, I buy walking dead season 1 on the psn store. Does Sony get all the money, does money still go to the shareholders? Does it come to a point where the games have to be removed from the store? I know companies have closed before but never really thought about it.

Grumpypants

Sony charge a licence fee. Around a tenner per game sold on ps4. Might be less on smaller games. The rest goes to the publisher, if they go into receivership maybe a receiver collects it to pay the debts.

ERG89

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1043395707862888448?s=19

Certainly didn't see PS4 & Xbox ports of this coming but there it is

Varik

Grumpypants wrote: »

Sony charge a licence fee. Around a tenner per game sold on ps4. Might be less on smaller games. The rest goes to the publisher, if they go into receivership maybe a receiver collects it to pay the debts.

It's the same on all things, it's 30%.

Same amount as MS and Valve.

Sephiroth_dude

Penn wrote: »

Saw a tweet this morning from someone whose boyfriend left his job at Microsoft to go work for Telltale games... earlier this week. They were still hiring new people as of this week even though senior management likely knew this was going to happen. Now he's been laid off.

Absolute scumbags for doing that, you can't mess people around like that, I won't be buying anymore of there games anyway.

Benzino

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Absolute scumbags for doing that, you can't mess people around like that, I won't be buying anymore of there games anyway.

I've heard similar stories where people moved to Germany from Ireland to work for some games company and were let go in their first week due to redundancies.

Grumpypants

Very often the hiring manager has no idea the redundancies are coming. Remember they got the chop too. It was prob a small few high level execs and legal who knew it was coming. And they would have no idea what the underlings are doing.

Cordell

It's quite the norm in the industry, unfortunately.

I won't be buying anymore of there games anyway.

There won't be any...

Mr.Nice Guy

Wow, shocked there won't be a final season of TWD. I thought the recent first episode was a strong return.

gizmo

This particular thread is quite illuminating on how they ended up in such dire financial circumstances, best to open it up and read it from the top.

https://twitter.com/joeparlock/status/1043227346692726784

In terms of management, the level of dysfunction they were operating under was well reported last year when they underwent their smaller scale restructuring and started planning to move away from their in-house engine. Between the severance issue, the Publishing arm of the company being blindsided with the Stranded Deep announcement and hiring continuing up till during the week, they've done nothing but solidify the opinions expressed at the time.

J. Marston

Imagine the amount blown on getting big names from Game of Thrones cast?

Mr.Nice Guy

Surprised the Batman games didn't do well. I thought their storyline arc involving Joker was very well done.

Sephiroth_dude

Cordell wrote: »

It's quite the norm in the industry, unfortunately.


There won't be any...

The ones I missed

K.O.Kiki

Grumpypants wrote: »

Highlights again just how hard it is to make games. Very few companies do it successfully for a long time. Telltale fit a niche market but probably overloaded it and trained their players to buy later at discounted prices. The poor sales of the new TWD being the final nail.

This might be on-the-money. I'm really worried that once enough consumers get into this mindset, waiting for sales/not buying at sustainable prices will bankrupt all but the largest publishers/developers - a Second Videogame Crash, if you may.

dreamers75

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

This might be on-the-money. I'm really worried that once enough consumers get into this mindset, waiting for sales/not buying at sustainable prices will bankrupt all but the largest publishers/developers - a Second Videogame Crash, if you may.

You mean all PC players ever, we are the only ones who have this option.

PS4 lads cant wait for a steam sale or humble sale etc:

We are not the cause of this, incorrect prices at release are the problem.