Telltale Games
Telltale Games was an American studio based in San Rafael, California, and on the 21st of September 2018 it lost almost everything in a single day. Melissa Hutchison, the voice actor behind Clementine in The Walking Dead games, was in the middle of a recording session when the news reached her. The session had to stop at once. Staff across the company were told they had 30 minutes to get out of the building. Only a few years earlier, this same company had been celebrated for bringing a whole genre of games back to life. How does a studio fall from that height to an emptied office in half an hour? Why did a company founded to tell stories have no warning to give its own people? And what, if anything, survived the day? To answer those questions, we start where Telltale itself started, with three developers who walked away from a famous employer.
In March 2004, LucasArts announced that "current market place realities and underlying economic considerations" made adventure games too risky to release. It canceled two sequels, Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max: Freelance Police, and laid off many of the developers working on them.
Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander were not among those let go. They simply disliked where the company was heading. Later that year they left, and in July 2004 they founded Telltale Games. The studio opening was announced on the 4th of October.
Bruner picked the name. The three imagined making adventure games that leaned less on puzzles and more on narrative, so that the studio would be telling a tale to the player. A technology attorney named Ira P. Rothken negotiated the early publishing and licensing deals.
The first goal was a new Sam & Max game, released in episodes. The characters had a small but devoted audience, which meant a game about them could succeed without an expensive license. There was a catch. LucasArts still held the Sam & Max rights and refused to negotiate, or to let Telltale finish Freelance Police.
So Telltale waited. Around mid-2005, once the licensing period had run out, Steve Purcell, the creator of Sam & Max, immediately offered the license to the young studio. Until that day arrived, the company needed other ways to pay its bills.
On the 11th of February 2005, Telltale released its first game, Telltale Texas Hold'em, a poker simulator. It was never meant to be a hit. Its job was to test the studio's new in-house engine, the Telltale Tool, and its distribution plans before the first real adventure shipped.
That adventure was Bone: Out from Boneville, based on Jeff Smith's comic book series. The Bone license also served as a trial run for episodic release. Five episodes were planned, but only two appeared, in 2005 and 2006, and the rest were canceled.
At the same time, Telltale built a run of games for Ubisoft based on the CSI television series, including CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder and CSI: Fatal Conspiracy. Each was made as episodes but sold as a single package. Few other publishers showed interest in Telltale's early work, so the studio built its own distribution.
Once the Sam & Max rights were secured, episodes arrived on a tight monthly schedule through the partner GameTap. Sam & Max: Season One was judged a success, and it is regarded as one of the first convincing demonstrations of episodic release in video games. It brought two rounds of angel investment, including money from Matthew Le Merle and members of the Keiretsu Forum.
A second Sam & Max season followed, along with games based on Wallace & Gromit and Homestar Runner. In 2008, Darrell Rodriguez became CEO of LucasArts and wanted its old adventure properties to flourish. That led to a license for Telltale to make Tales of Monkey Island.
Players generally paid once for a season pass when a season's first episode launched. Retail was trickier. Telltale sold a disc holding the first episode, with the pass tied to the disc rather than to a person's account. Job Stauffer later called this resale-friendly arrangement a "nice in-between" for players, retailers and the studio.
In early 2010, Telltale also began a pilot program for one-off games that tried different gameplay and storytelling ideas. Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent, made with Graham Annable, appeared in June 2010. Poker Night at the Inventory, a crossover starring characters from Sam & Max, Homestar Runner, Team Fortress 2 and Penny Arcade, followed late that year.
Few of these experiments earned much money. Until 2010, the founders feared that investors might suddenly leave and force the company to close. One pilot, known inside the studio as the "zombie prototype," would change that.
In June 2010, Telltale announced licenses from NBC Universal for episodic series based on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park. The studio had built its name on comedy, and these deals added drama. Jurassic Park: The Game was the first to break from standard adventure design, adding quick time events and choices made against a clock. In April 2011 came a further license for Law & Order.
By 2010, yearly revenue had reached $10 million, up 90% on the year before. In 2011, marketing vice-president Steve Allison named Back to the Future the studio's most successful franchise so far. He said most games needed only 100,000 copies to break even, and many recent releases had sold twice that or more. Staff numbers grew from 90 to 140.
The real breakthrough came in 2011, when Telltale licensed the comic series The Walking Dead, along with Fables, in association with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Allison guessed that The Walking Dead could grow into a franchise worth $20 to $30 million.
The game was not built around puzzles. It offered a cinematic experience in which dialogue choices and quick time events created "determinants" that carried into later parts of an episode and into future episodes. One example forced a split-second decision about which of two characters to save from a zombie attack. These choices did not rewrite the main plot, but they gave each player a more personal version of it.
The numbers beat Allison's forecast. The game sold one million copies in 20 days, passed 8.5 million episode purchases by 2013, and earned an estimated $40 million. It spawned two more five-episode seasons, a three-episode mini-season and a four-episode final season.
It also set a pattern. Nearly every Telltale game afterward was built around choices that echoed through later episodes and seasons. That pattern would become the studio's signature and, according to former staff, a trap.
After The Walking Dead, licenses piled up: Tales from the Borderlands, from Gearbox Software's series; Game of Thrones, from the HBO show; Minecraft: Story Mode; Batman, from DC Comics; and Guardians of the Galaxy, from Marvel. Looking back after the closure, former employees argued that the spree was an attempt to repeat one hit. Each famous license carried weight, and losing it was a risk, so the games stayed close to the proven Walking Dead model. In their view, a risk-taking studio had become a risk-averse one.
The payroll swelled alongside the catalog. In mid-2013 Telltale moved to a bigger space and grew from 125 to 160 people. By around 2015 it employed 200 to 250. At its peak in mid-2017, the company had about 400 employees.
Telltale also published other studios' games under the name Telltale Publishing. It brought The Jackbox Party Pack to retail on consoles and published 7 Days to Die by The Fun Pimps for consoles. According to Variety, that deal was as financially successful as the first season of The Walking Dead. On the 18th of August 2016, it published Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n, made by Night School Studio.
Growth demanded new management. In 2014-2015, leaders decided the company had to restructure to handle more projects and more people. Connors resigned as CEO, and co-founder Kevin Bruner, already president, took the job in January 2015. Connors said growth had brought its own challenges and that Bruner would be better placed to pursue expansion. He stayed on the board and worked as a creative consultant. An anonymous quality control employee, writing in Gamasutra after the closure, called this handover "the beginning of the end."
In February 2015, Lionsgate announced an investment to produce "Super Shows," hybrids of television and games meant for streaming services. Lionsgate chief Jon Feltheimer and Unity Technologies chief John Riccitiello joined the board. According to Variety, the idea never left pre-production, because of troubles that surfaced in 2016 and 2017.
By 2016, Bruner said Telltale had built a setup that could handle four major titles at once, with room left for side projects. Current and former staff told USgamer, The Verge and Variety in 2017 that this setup had created a permanent state of crunch. New episodes had to keep arriving on a regular schedule, good or not, so the company always had money coming in.
The anonymous quality control tester reported working 48 to 60 hours a week. The department tested at least two game series across many platforms at once and was understaffed, which let more problems slip through.
The Telltale Tool made things harder. Until 2016 it had no physics engine, so anything that fell in a scene had to be animated by hand. It also lacked dynamic lighting, so artists built lighting through 3D tools such as Maya, which stretched out art production. A 2015 Kotaku article described "an undercurrent of fan anger" over bugs, and said the support forums showed a publisher constantly shipping broken games.
Around early 2016, Telltale moved to an improved engine. It was partly used first in The Walking Dead: Michonne and finished for Batman: The Telltale Series. The new version supported DirectX 11 features, including physics-based models and dynamic lighting and shadows. It also cut memory use that had caused bugs on some consoles.
New consoles had arrived, and the old engine's graphics looked dated beside them. Big-budget games such as God of War were also moving toward emotional storytelling, which Telltale would struggle to match.
Narrative designer Emily Grace Buck described the pressure from above. Executives often demanded rewrites, and most games had between 60 and 90 percent of their material reworked after review. Some changes came days before an episode went to certification. Buck said many apparent engine bugs were really hasty animations that nobody had time to smooth out. She and others described a "culture of fear" of demotion or firing.
The rewrites could also reverse a game's whole tone. Minecraft: Story Mode was first pushed to be more mature, then reworked into a family-friendly title. For Guardians of the Galaxy, writers crafted a story they felt matched the source's humor and wit, yet were told to make it darker.
Anonymous sources said very few games turned a profit. Only the first season of The Walking Dead, Minecraft: Story Mode and the publishing revenue from 7 Days to Die did. Batman: The Telltale Series, released in 2016, was said to be one of the company's worst commercial failures. A change at the top was coming in 2017.
On the 15th of March 2017, Bruner announced that he had stepped down as CEO. He said the time had come to "pass the reins to someone that can better drive Telltale to the next level." Variety reported that the board had actually voted him out. Pete Hawley, formerly vice president for games at Zynga, took over. Unlike a temporary corporate fixer, Hawley had committed to staying on after the repairs. Connors remained on the board in an advisory role.
In November 2017, a restructuring cut about 90 positions, roughly a quarter of the staff. Hawley said the aim was "fewer, better games with a smaller team." Sources told USgamer that most of those cut belonged to the management structure behind the studio's problems.
In June 2018, Bruner sued Telltale over his departure. He claimed financial damages, saying he had apparently been removed from the board and could not see the company's finances while planning to sell some of his shares. Telltale called the claims "meritless." Kent Mudle, creative director of The Walking Dead: The Final Season, said the new executives were more hands-off and micromanaged the creative teams less.
That same month, Telltale announced a partnership with Netflix, beginning with Minecraft: Story Mode. It also revealed a game based on Stranger Things, meant to bridge the gap between the show's second and third seasons. According to Variety, earlier management, including Bruner, had rejected a Netflix collaboration after the show first aired in mid-2016. Night School Studio had been working with Telltale since 2017 on a first-person game leading into the Stranger Things project, but reported difficulty cooperating with the company.
Then came the end. Connors said Telltale was ready to close another round of financing when its last major investor pulled out. Variety suggested this might be Lionsgate, which had told the board the week before that it wished to return to its core film business. Variety also reported that AMC Networks and the Korean mobile publisher Smilegate had backed away the day before the announcement.
Hawley called it a "majority studio closure." Around 90% of the workforce, between 225 and 250 people, were let go. About 25 stayed to meet obligations to the board and partners, including finishing the Minecraft: Story Mode project for Netflix. Hawley said the company had received "a tremendous amount of positive feedback, but ultimately, that did not translate to sales."
The people let go said they received no severance and only limited time on their health care benefits. On the 24th of September 2018, they were allowed back for three hours to gather belongings. Game Workers Unite called the treatment "exploitative," and the suddenness renewed talk of unionizing game developers. The same day, former employee Vernie Roberts filed a class-action lawsuit for about 275 employees. It alleged violations of the federal WARN Act and of California's 60-day notice requirement for mass layoffs.
The unfinished games fared differently. Netflix said it was evaluating other options for Stranger Things. The first three episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode reached Netflix on the 27th of November 2018, and the last two came that December. The second of four planned episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season went out on the 25th of September. Cory Barlog suggested that Telltale should focus on paying its laid-off developers first. At New York Comic Con, Robert Kirkman announced that his company Skybound Entertainment would finish the last two episodes through Skybound Games, with the original team.
On the 4th of October 2018, narrative designer Rachel Noel said her team in the skeleton crew had been laid off too. Assignment proceedings began on the 11th of October, with Sherwood Partners liquidating the remaining assets. By that November, digital storefronts had started removing Telltale's games.
Some of the removed games came back under new publishers. In September 2019, Skybound issued all four Walking Dead seasons as a single collection, The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series. Gearbox Software rereleased Tales from the Borderlands in February 2021.
The name itself returned. After talks with Sherwood Partners that began in February 2019, LCG Entertainment announced on the 28th of August 2019 that it would use "Telltale Games" as its trade name. It operates from Malibu, California, with a satellite studio in Corte Madera. Jamie Ottilie is chief executive and Brian Waddle chief revenue officer. The Walking Dead and Stranger Things licenses went back to their owners, but the new company kept The Wolf Among Us and Batman, plus the Puzzle Agent property.
Athlon Games handles distribution, and Chris Kingsley, Lyle Hall and Tobias Sjögren provided funding. None had worked with the old Telltale. Its first release, in December 2019, was Batman: The Telltale Series with a new noir-style shader. At The Game Awards 2019 it announced The Wolf Among Us 2. Offering former staff only freelance roles drew skepticism, and some urged LCG to repay money owed to the old workers. Others called for a boycott. By 2022, roughly half of the new company's staff were former Telltale employees.
The first season of The Walking Dead in 2012 is credited with reviving adventure games, which had languished since about 2000. Dontnod Entertainment, approached by Square Enix to try the episodic approach, found it ideal for Life Is Strange. Critics, however, often summed up Telltale's branching stories as "choices don't matter." A player might save a character early on, only to watch that character die later so the plot could hold together.
Several alumni carried the narrative style into their own studios. Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, co-writers of the first Walking Dead season, founded Campo Santo in 2013 and released Firewatch. Adam Hines, a Telltale writer, co-founded Night School Studio in 2014, and its game Oxenfree relied heavily on a "walk and talk" mechanic.
Four former employees who had left before the closure, Michael Choung, Dennis Lenart, Nick Herman and Pierre Shorette, formed AdHoc Studio to make live-action interactive games. AdHoc now helps with narrative and cinematic work on The Wolf Among Us 2 for the new Telltale, and it released the well-received Dispatch.
In 2019, Connors created Skunkape Games with Rodkin, Randy Tudor and Jonathan Sgro. From 2020, it released remasters of the Sam & Max games and Poker Night at the Inventory. In 2021, Bruner founded Dramatic Labs with more than twenty former employees, including Andrew Grant, Dan Martin, Kent Mudle and Brett Tosti. Its first game, Star Trek: Resurgence, came out in May 2023.
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Common questions
Who founded Telltale Games and when?
Telltale Games was founded in July 2004 in San Rafael, California, by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander. The studio opening was announced on the 4th of October 2004.
Why did Telltale Games shut down in 2018?
Telltale Games began a majority studio closure on the 21st of September 2018 after its last major investor pulled out of a financing round. Around 90% of its staff, between 225 and 250 people, were let go, and about 25 remained.
What was the most successful Telltale Games game?
The Walking Dead, released in 2012, was Telltale Games' biggest success. It sold one million copies in 20 days, passed 8.5 million episode purchases by 2013, and earned an estimated $40 million.
What was the Telltale Tool game engine?
The Telltale Tool was the proprietary game engine Telltale Games built shortly after its founding and used for every game it developed. It lacked a physics engine until 2016, and an upgrade added DirectX 11 support, physics-based models and dynamic lighting.
Is Telltale Games still making games today?
Yes. LCG Entertainment announced on the 28th of August 2019 that it was relaunching Telltale Games as its trade name, operating from Malibu, California. The new company kept the licenses for The Wolf Among Us and Batman and announced The Wolf Among Us 2.
What caused crunch time at Telltale Games?
Telltale Games ran several major series at once and needed to release episodes regularly to keep revenue flowing. Staff told reporters in 2017 that this created constant crunch, with quality control testers working 48 to 60 hours a week.
All sources
118 references cited across the entry
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- 20Exclusive: How a Culture of Crunch Brought Telltale From Critical Darling to LayoffsMatt Kim — November 14, 2017
- 21How Telltale teamed up with 'Game of Thrones' and BorderlandsAlexa Ray Corriea — December 23, 2013
- 22Minecraft is getting a story-driven game from the studio behind The Walking DeadAndrew Webster — December 18, 2014
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- 33Sources: Telltale CEO Steps DownJason Schreier — March 16, 2017
- 34Former Zynga VP of games Pete Hawley named CEO of Telltale GamesAlissa McAloon — September 14, 2017
- 35Telltale Games lays off 90 employeesAlissa McAloon — November 7, 2017
- 36Telltale's quest to end 'The Walking Dead' on a highNick Summer — June 15, 2018
- 37Former CEO and co-founder sues Telltale GamesMegan Farokhmanesh — June 15, 2018
- 38How The Walking Dead: The Final Season's Creative Director Kept His Vision Alive During Telltale's DemiseNadia Oxford — May 3, 2019
- 39Exclusive: Netflix to add games to its service, including Minecraft: Story ModeNick Pino — June 13, 2018
- 40A secret Stranger Things game died before it was even announcedMegan Farokhmanesh — April 23, 2019
- 41Telltale, Acclaimed Maker of Story-Based Video Games, Lays Off Most of Its StaffJustin Bailey — September 24, 2018
- 42Narrative Adventure Studio Telltale Games Essentially Closes DownImran Khan — September 21, 2018
- 43'The Walking Dead' Game Developer Hit With 90% Staff Layoffs as 225 Are Let GoLiz Lanier — September 21, 2018
- 44How Masterful Narrative Game Makers Telltale Suddenly Lost EverythingBrian Crecente — September 24, 2018
- 45AMC, Smilegate Backed Out of Funding Talks With Telltale a Day Before ClosureBrian Crecente — September 26, 2018
- 46Telltale's 'The Walking Dead': Kirkman's Skybound Discusses What's NextBrian Crecente — October 10, 2018
- 47The Tragic End of Telltale GamesMegan Farokhmanesh — October 4, 2018
- 48Telltale Games begins wave of layoffs, cancels Stranger Things gameSam Mackovech — September 21, 2018
- 49The Walking Dead studio Telltale hit with layoffsMegan Farokhmanesh — September 21, 2018
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- 52Telltale's treatment of staff "a problem endemic in the industry"Matthew Handradan — September 24, 2018
- 53Telltale hit with class-action lawsuit for breaking labor lawsSamit Sarkar — September 25, 2018
- 54Sources: Telltale Games Shutting Down, The Wolf Among Us 2 and Stranger Things Canceled Update, CorrectionMatt Kim — September 21, 2018
- 55Netflix to still produce Stranger Things game despite Telltale collapseSeptember 24, 2018
- 57Telltale's Minecraft: Story Mode Launches On NetflixColin Stevens — November 27, 2018
- 58Final Season Of Telltale's The Walking Dead Might Continue, But Many Questions RemainEddie Makuch — September 24, 2018
- 59Fans And Developers Are Torn About Whether The Walking Dead Games Should ContinueEthan Gach — September 25, 2018
- 60Telltale Is Looking For Another Company To Hire Its Staff To Finish The Walking Dead, Sources SayEthan Gach — October 3, 2018
- 61Deal reached to finish The Walking Dead: The Final Season, company saysOwen S. Good — October 6, 2018
- 62NewsTelltale reportedly lays off more of its staff (updated)Mallory Locklear — October 4, 2018
- 63NewsReport: Telltale Games lays off remaining 'skeleton crew'Bryant Francis — October 4, 2018
- 64Telltale Begins Liquidation, Pulling Games From SteamBrian Crecente — November 14, 2018
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- 67The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series is coming soonFraser Brown — February 10, 2021
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- 80Telltale on its 'wildly successful' season pass discs and what's next for SwitchKatharine Byrne — September 28, 2017
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- 101The Wolf Among Us 2 Now Due in 2027, Following Remaster of Telltale's Original GameTom Phillips — June 6, 2026
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- 110Narrative choice is one of the most misunderstood promises of the decadeMalindy Hetfeld — December 16, 2019
- 111MagazineOpinion – Your Choices Don't Matter In Telltale GamesElise Favis — February 3, 2015
- 112Remembering the only choice that mattered in Telltale's The Walking DeadTom Baines — September 20, 2018
- 113Remembering Telltale GamesAndrew Webster — September 24, 2018
- 114Former Telltale Devs Form AdHoc Studio, Continue Adventure Game LegacyMichael Futter — February 8, 2019
- 115Sam & Max Save the World Remastered is coming in DecemberConnor Sheridan — 2020-11-09
- 116Why a Group of Ex-Telltale Developers Are Bringing Back Sam & MaxPatrick Klepek — Vice — November 9, 2020
- 117Poker Night at the Inventory remaster announced for PS4, Switch, and PCSal Romano — February 4, 2026
- 118Telltale veterans form Dramatic Labs, working on Star Trek: ResurgenceJames Batchelor — 2021-12-10
- 119Star Trek: Resurgence launches in MayAlice Newcome-Beill — 2023-04-26