It hasn’t even been a month since we got the shocking news that Telltale Games laid off the majority of its employees in seeming preparation to shut down entirely. Reports at the time, including our own, stated that only about 25 employees were kept on. They were only there to finish adapting Minecraft: Story Mode for Netflix. Now, it seems that even that “skeleton crew” is gone.
This comes from one of the last remaining Telltale employees, Rachel Noel. She was kept on as a narrative designer, but now it seems her and her team were asked to leave as well. She made the news, and her surprise, apparent on Twitter.
After the responses poured in, she wrote more tweets to clarify what she meant. Apparently there are still some people left at Telltale, it was just her team (the size of which isn’t mentioned) that was cut. Like those before her, Noel was not given severance. She also made it a point to say that she wasn’t involved with The Walking Dead.
Kotaku asked Telltale CEO Pete Hawley for comment. He responded by saying that the company would make an official statement on the new layoffs by Monday. He added that the company is still hoping to “do a deal” to finish The Walking Dead. It’s something I’ve covered before, but it looks like “multiple partners” are looking into ways to hire the remaining Telltale staff to finish The Walking Dead.
For some reason, fans have turned to The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman to quell their fears about never seeing the end of the game’s story. Despite the fact that Kirkman has openly focused on the comics and hasn’t taken a very active role in the show or the games, he was still asked about the game during a Q&A panel at this weekend’s New York Comic Con.
“Everyone involved is trying to make sure Clementine’s story is told,” he told the fan. “I’m not concerned at the moment with telling that story in the comics.”
As for Telltale, the studio still exists with an unknown number of employees. For now.
