Well, we saw this one coming.
Polygon reports 25% -- twenty-five percent -- of Telltale's workforce is being laid off. The reason, according to CEO Pete Hawley who apparently has no qualms emulating LucasArts at its worst, is "the realities of the environment we face moving forward". That is a somewhat familiar sentiment...
We wish those laid-off the best of luck moving forward themselves, and for those who are left... Run!
Source: Benzo
I guess the original talent is all gone but it would be sweet to have more classic episodic adventures.
Remi
AlfredJ
The official statement also mentioned a new focus on fewer, higher quality releases, which is something people have been asking for for a long time.
My take on that… You release the games you said wouldn't be impacted and then what? Going by most situations similar to this in any industry, you wait for those projects to end, then lay off X amount of that remaining staff. Then you tell your remaining staff to do "more with less" and outsource work to some group that have no clue what they're actually working with -- think MI1:SE.
It's hard to be even halfway optimistic about any of this, seeing who their new CEO is, who has quite a reputation. Think Randy Breen, 2000-LEC.
From my perspective that's the actual "marketplace reality". :~
Oh yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that this was in any way a good thing. Very sad to see what happened to this studio. They really were something very special once.
AlfredJ
The official statement also mentioned a new focus on fewer, higher quality releases, which is something people have been asking for for a long time.
My take on that… You release the games you said wouldn't be impacted and then what? Going by most situations similar to this in any industry, you wait for those projects to end, then lay off X amount of that remaining staff. Then you tell your remaining staff to do "more with less" and outsource work to some group that have no clue what they're actually working with -- think MI1:SE.
It's hard to be even halfway optimistic about any of this, seeing who their new CEO is, who has quite a reputation. Think Randy Breen, 2000-LEC.
From my perspective that's the actual "marketplace reality". :~
One of the articles on this also led me back to Telltale's glassdoor employee reviews, which is always quite a read. Seems there has been a lot of mismanagement going on at TTG for a long time, and I'm not surprised most (all?) of the big names of the old days left when they had the chance.