Sep 21, 2018

The evidential game will not pay retirement to hundreds of employees who suddenly shut down and were fired

A tough week in the North American video game industry just got tougher. Days after Capcom announced it would shut down its Vancouver studio, Telltale Games has announced that it too will shut down its San Rafael, California studio.

The company was best known for its episodic graphic adventure games like The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, Batman: The Telltale Series, and Minecraft: Story Mode. It initiated a “majority studio closure” today after laying off around 250 employees, saying in an official statement:

Various reports online have indicated that the laid off employees won't receive any severance pay and will lose their health insurance within a couple weeks. (Capcom, by contrast, will be offering severance pay to its employees.) Affected employees have been sharing details on Twitter about their situation:

An exposé published on The Verge earlier this year looked at the company's poor management, including such accusations as underpaying employees and a toxic “crunch culture” (including 14- to 18-hour work days, up to six days of the week).

Some comments online indicate that employees were given just 30 minutes to leave the studio after being told they were laid off. The company's CEO Pete Hawley referred to these employees as “friends” in a statement:

The game studio's co-founder Kevin Bruner, who left a year-and-a-half ago after disagreements with the company's board of directors, issued a statement on his personal blog:

Telltale is expected to issue further statements regarding its product portfolio in the coming weeks.