The award winning gaming company TellTale Games brought you some of your favourite episodic
games over the last decade. The walking dead, Game of thrones and minecraft, just to name
a few. But last week, telltale’s ceo announced that the company was shutting down, and 90
percent of their employees were let go without severance. The shutdown has caused a massive
uproar on social media. Telltale has gotten a pretty bad rep over the last few months,
and this shutdown seems to be a part of a much wider problem. I’m going to tell you
everything you need to know, right now on IO.
Welcome back to inform overload, where we keep you up to date with everything that’s
happening on the internet. I’m charlotte dobre and if you need a place to get your
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our links are posted down below. On September 21st 2018, the ceo of telltale
pete Hawley announced that telltale was shutting down, and 90 percent of its employees would
be fired that day. That’s 225 to 250 employees that were told to drop what they were doing
and leave. These employees were not given a warning, severance pay, and they only had
a limited amount of time left on their health care benefits, 9 days to be exact. They were
given 30 minutes to leave the building. To make matters even worse, one employee who
was working until 3 am the night before did so with no thought that the studio was about
to let them go. Telltale said Only 25 employees were going to be continuing on to fulfill
the companies obligations to its board and partners. They still need to fulfill he contractual
obligations for Minecraft: story mode for Netflix. This abrupt shut down happened after
their last major investor pulled out of the company. No one knows exactly who this investor
was, but its rumoured that it was Lionhead. There is no word on whether or not telltale
would be finishing The wolf among us, season two, game of thrones season two and the highly
anticipated stranger things project, but apparently all the employees who were working on these
games have been let go. That being said, neflix reportedly still plans to produce the stranger
things game despite the collapse. Telltale also did say that they would be finishing
the walking dead final season. In an update, the company wrote on twitter
that there are multiple potential partners who have stepped forward who have expressed
interest in helping to see the final season of the walking dead through to completion.
The question is, is telltale going to use the money from these financial backers to
provide severance to the employees they let down. Can you really use the excuse, we have
no money, at this point where people have literally offered them money. It also seems
like pretty poor planning. Why did it get to this point where they had to announce the
closure of their company before they exhausted all their opitons first. Clearly there are
investors that want to pitch in, why didn’t you look for those investors before laying
off over 200 people? It seems like telltale is poorly managed, and this isn’t the first
time that’s been said either. This abrupt shut down of telltale has caused
a lot of anger in the gaming community, and among the employees. Former telltale employee
Brandon Cebenka tweeted. None of my sleepless nights or long hours on weekends trying to
ship a game on time got me severance today. Don’t work overtime unless you’re paid
for it ya’ll. Protect your health. Companies don’t care about you. Tweet is in the comments
folder. There are a lot of rumors floating around
that telltale was exploitative of their employees, and a lot of people think that game developers
should unionize. The fact that these employees were not given any form of severance is pretty
terrible. A few months back, there were a lot of rumors going around that telltale was
a company that suffered from toxic management, where employees were constantly overworked
without overtime. Those same employees were never rewarded for the long hours and time
they spent away from their families. Emily Grace Buck, lead designer on several of telltale
games including the final season of the walking dead, has been one of the most vocal of the
employees let go. She said. Yes its true. We usually worked 50+ hour weeks. Sometimes
70-80. Weekends were often expected. We were constantly ‘understaffed’. Deadlines were
ludicrously tight. Our schedules were so close we went from one crunch directly into another.
Whats more is, she would work multiple nights in a row with barely any sleep to hit a milestone
review, only to have 90% of that work not constructively criticised and thrown out the
window at that very review. Telltale has been having financial problems
for quite some time. Co founder of tell tale and former ceo Kevin Bruner sued the company
back in june seeking financial damages. Telltale responded by saying that the suit was nothing
more than a way for Bruner to seek revenge against a company that was already under financial
strain. That being said, telltale is not the only
gaming developer that doesn’t treat its employees well. Its part of a much wider problem
in the industry. Contracts are often one sided, hours are always long, and managers, well,
you get the picture. Lets hope the remaining employees at telltale
listen to the massive uproar on social media, and pay their employees what they deserve.
Anyways guys, that’s all I have for you on that story, its time to respond to some
comments. Alex – will you have kids if you do what
would you name them. I probably will have kids but not for a few years. I’ve always
really liked Egyptian names like cleo. I used to like I S I S but yeah that’s not appropriate
anymore. Rosie Murray – can you do a French accent.
Not well. I also feel like I sound quebecois. Grimm hades – charlotte I am glad you reinvented
what potato stands for. It used to be derogatory now its good. We are proud to be spuds. And
I am proud to be your queen. Johnny yyy – charlotte whats ur favourite
meme. I love classical art memes, they are my favourite. Like the y tho guy. If you don’t
follow classical art shit on instagram I highly recommendd
Nyte Fish – I love IO, always keeps us updated with the trending news. That’s ma job, thanks
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