On Friday, independent reporter Andrea Ayres posted an allegation that the studio had shut down, based on feedback from a game-development Facebook community that simply said, “Telltale Games is closing their doors.” Shortly afterward, Telltale narrative designer Emily Grace Buck confirmed that she does “not have a job anymore” and added that she was looking for job opening information for “a lot of other amazing people I love dearly.
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After Gamasutra reported on the story by saying Telltale was “closing its doors,” The Verge followed up to indicate that a team of 25 staffers will remain on board—perhaps to usher the company’s remaining episodes to launch. USGamer separately reports that a new game in Telltale’s series, and a previously announced series based on the Netflix show , have been canceled.
Shortly after these stories went live, Forbes reporter Joe Parlock offered his own synthesis of today’s Telltale news as follows. The studio’s remaining crew of roughly 25 staffers will stay on board until this final season of The Walking Dead is complete, at which point the studio will shutter due to “bankruptcy.” This will affect the studio’s recent push into publishing other studios’ games, Parlock writes. Part of the company’s financial trouble, he says, is due to the previously unannounced news that the studio’s deal with Netflix (and thus the license) fell through earlier this year.
Telltale Games rose to prominence in 2012 after its first season launched to critical acclaim. The developer followed that launch with licensed, narrative-heavy games based on properties like Batman, , , and . Before those games launched, the studio worked its magic on classic point-and-click series like .
Telltale Games has yet to post any announcement about its state, and this news does not confirm whether its recent push into publishing other studios’ games as Telltale Publishing is affected. We have reached out to Telltale Games and will update if we receive a response.
