13 ms·

Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

189 points by bspn 8y ago

paxys 8y ago
People are blaming mismanagement, bad licensing terms etc., and while that all may be true, it is also worth noting that Telltale has not released anything really worth playing since The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. No studio will survive after releasing ~12 bad to average games in a row over 4 years.
- k__ 8y ago
  The probably felt good because they worked with well known franchises. Sad for some of the employees I guess, but I think the company deserves this outcome.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > No studio will survive after releasing ~12 bad to average games in a row over 4 years. And Telltale was vastly more at risk than most studios because of their episodic games. They basically sold each game with a funnel, and one bad episode jeopardized sales for everything after it. If some studio like Supergiant (or perhaps some more-prolific equivalent) released four years of bad-to-average games, I would still keep an eye on their output in hopes that any one new release might be great. But Telltale was putting out all of these big-license games and had everything past Episode 1 stymied by past weakness like a TV show with a bad opener. It was an almost uniquely vulnerable situation for a studio.
ta201809 8y ago
This sounds very similar to the layoffs that happened with ML and computer vision staff at Shutterstock. I heard it was a super unprofessional sudden thing, poor severance, no continuation of benefits, happening to teams that just had been praised for being high performers for short term business critical product deployments. It’s not a gaming industry thing, and no job segments are safe from this kind of thing. Just a reminder to insist on a clearly stated severance package when you join, and walk away if an employer won’t offer that to you, no matter what you think about your personal leverage in the situation or your seniority or anything else. When it comes to generous severance that is stated in the employment agreement, do not take no for an answer.
- yodon 8y ago
  If the company burns through all its cash and craters in a financial implosion of bankruptcy and debt like this it's unlikely to matter whether you had a generous severance plan called out in your employment agreement. The best you could hope to do is get in line with the other unsecured creditors for your share of the tiny leavings left after the Aeron chairs are sold at auction.
dogma1138 8y ago
I wonder how much the closure was financial mismanagement vs their business model simply catching up to them. TTG shtick was essentially “emotional abuse simulators” all their games had one trick get you attached to characters and see them die with very little actual player control over it. They were one trick pony and the novelty wore off rather quickly. Their games also were based on expensive franchises and they often offered the first chapter for free in order to hook people in. They also never really developed their formula further the games didn’t became more interactive the same quick time events over and over that never really changed the overall story more than which one of these two will die and or betray you later. I’m actually surprised that they lasted this long given how expensive it is to develop these games even if they weren’t technically impressive recording hours and hours of voice acting is much more expensive than shiny coding shaders.
- kevinh 8y ago
  > TTG shtick was essentially “emotional abuse simulators” all their games had one trick get you attached to characters and see them die with very little actual player control over it. Some of their games were like this, but others were not. The Tales from the Borderlands series and Guardians of the Galaxy series were primarily vehicles for comedy, and did not rely on the trope you're mentioning.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    Borderlands was a betrayal simulator i didn’t really played Guardians of the Galaxy. GoT was essentially the same as TWD. However the gameplay was essentially identical across all of them a semi interactive cut scene that is broken by QTEs which don’t have a major impact on the overall story arc they at best just shift a few characters around the events still unfold as they are. Expensive licenses and a repetitive “point and click” gameplay with dwindling sales just doesnt work and I don’t think it was a surprise to the upper management or the board. And I’m actually surprised it came as a surprise to employees who should’ve been aware of poor sales and high costs.
    - Aeolun 8y ago
btilly 8y ago
The point of severance is to give ex-employees a reason not to sue. However there is left point in protecting from lawsuits when there will be nothing left that can be sued. However I suspect that not paying out owed PTO may be a different story...
- vcanales 8y ago
  It's really interesting to read this perspective on what severance is in the US, because in my country it definitely is just a right everyone has so that they can land on their feet.
  - analog31 8y ago
    In the US, we have unemployment compensation insurance for that purpose. I believe you can collect unemployment even if the employer is insolvent, because it's pre-paid by the employer, and comes out of a collective fund. As I understand it, a severance usually involves the employee signing some sort of agreement.
    - chii 8y ago
      So who pays for this insurance? Is it usually the company, or the employee?
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        Both.
      - btilly 8y ago
        Employers. See https://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/uifactsheet.asp https://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/uifactsheet.as... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_S... for more information about it. Note that the caps are per state, but is sufficiently low that it doesn't replace a professional level income. Therefore if your lifestyle is based on an income of $50K+, you are strongly advised to acquire personal savings for emergencies in case you lose your job. And C-level executives frequently have contracts which specify severance packages that guarantee their income for an extended time if they are fired. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_parachute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_parachute for more on that. This can lead to weirdly misaligned incentives, like C-level executives on a failing company trying to get fired because their severance package will leave them better off than staying with the sinking ship.
anontechworker 8y ago
I might be misreading/misinterpreting..what was the reason for the closure? The article mentions it was financial but it didn’t seem absolute.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Once the novelty wore off people stopped buying their games because they were all the same and hardly a game. So expensive licensing rights, expensive development due to 100’a of hours of voice acting and giving the first chapter for free to hook people in I think resulted in a very poor business model in the long run. If you played one TTG game you played them all they never really developed their formula so it really bacame stale.
- flavmartins 8y ago
  Another article states that only 2 games were actually profitable. Minecraft Story Mode, and one of the Walking Dead games. All others were failed financially and did not recoup costs.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    The GoT game was likely a huge money sink for them, super expensive franchise and they had to pay for the likeness as well as some of the voice acting of some relatively pretty big actors.
  - BlackjackCF 8y ago
    I dunno why I was surprised by this. The company must have been super mismanaged. I know that it's a lot of hard work to put together a game, especially one with an outdated engine, but I'm really surprised that the games Telltale was putting out required such a big crew.
    - baud147258 8y ago
      All the TT games had a lot of voice acting and motion capture, so that'll drive costs up a lot.
lquist 8y ago
Is severance normal at a startup or a game studio? I would think first priority would be contractual obligations (payroll, contractual severance, vendors, etc.) and then only then severance.
- cloakandswagger 8y ago
  I don't think severance is normal or expected of any business teetering on insolvency.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    In my experience, severance (as part of your employment agreement) is not normal or expected for any job in the USA. I’ve been working for decades and have never seen even a hint of it in any employer’s benefits info. Severance is something only big shot executives get.
    - hellogoodbyeeee 8y ago
      I got a severance package from a part time bank teller job after they closed the branch I worked at. I also got a severance package when a small business I worked at went under. I'd say severance packages are a lot more common than you think they are.
    - tibbon 8y ago
      I've gotten severance (just like, 4 weeks or so?) from the last 3 or 4 companies I've worked for. Just as a datapoint.
  - vkou 8y ago
    My father has received severance - not once, but twice from Kodak Canada. The first time was during their bankruptcy, the second time was because they cost-optimized most of the senior people out of his project.
  - grigjd3 8y ago
    Severance is "keep your mouth shut" money. If the company is tanking, there's no reason for it.
bb88 8y ago
If you think about employment as a business transaction, then you should insist on "Cash Up Front", e.g. signing bonus, higher salary, or immediate stock ownership to offset your personal risk. Joining a company is more of a risk to you as an employee than it is to them in hiring you. Basically it comes down to asking for "Cash Up Front". Expecting a cash settlement on the backend of a failed business transaction is fraught with perils of not getting your investment back in the company. And asking for severance is no different.
- skh 8y ago
  In an ideal world this would be feasible. Few people have the pricing power for their labor to do this. I'd classify what you call a failed business transaction as a failure of government to enact necessary labor laws.
  - bb88 8y ago
    So in a world where there's a glut of labor, you're absolutely right. We, however, are not in a glut of labor for software engineers and game designers. And besides, if you explained to the employer the risks you forsee in joining their company, they will most likely understand that reason for asking for a higher salary than the norm.
    - HarryHirsch 8y ago
      We, however, are not in a glut of labor for software engineers and game designers If that's true, why are you folks working in open offices and are wearing noise-cancelling headphones?
      - BigJono 8y ago
        Because the price of rent in major city centres is ludicrous, I assume.
    - skh 8y ago
      I’m thinking beyond software engineers. I’m thinking about people who don’t have pricing power for their labor and are not at all in a position to negotiate. They have to rely on government to help them with unequal balance in power when it comes to pricing for their labor.
slg 8y ago
The worst part for many of these people is that our country still links health insurance with your employer. It is bad enough to suddenly lose your job and primary source of income, but that type of thing is often unavoidable when a company goes belly up. However only getting a week's notice before all your health insurance benefits disappear is the type of thing that just shouldn't happen in this country.
- tyingq 8y ago
  Also notable that buying health insurance on your own, versus through your employer is typically 2 to 4x the cost.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    You can purchase your old benefit through FMLA for up to 36 months in an involuntary departure, but you pay 104% of the cost that previously was split between you and the employer.
    - pkaye 8y ago
      What if your employer went bankrupt?
      - delinka 8y ago
        What does the cause matter? Company's dead, the employee "involuntarily departed."
        dragonwriter 8y ago
        The cause matters because the right to individually buy into the existing employer-sponsored group health plan. So, if the employer no longer exists, and the employer-sponsored health plan no longer exists, the right to buy in is meaningless.
        8y ago
bradford 8y ago
Anyone know what the unemployment benefits are like in CA? In WA state, "Unemployment benefits are made available through taxes paid by your former employer(s) to partially replace your regular earnings and help you meet expenses while you look for another job." Not sure what the situation is in CA but I'd hope that, in the absence of a severance package, there's something else that can help them land cleanly here...
- georgyo 8y ago
  A lot of things like COBRA go though your former employer. I wonder how many post-employment benfits work at when the former employer no longer exists.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Domenic_S 8y ago
  $450/week maximum. There's a waiting period (2 weeks?) as well.
  - JBlue42 8y ago
    Yup, without tacking out taxes. More like $410 I think when taxes are taken out. Luckily, the State doesn't tax it as well. I learned when looking more deeper into it that some states will do so. I think it's kind of shitty that it is taxed, especially if you live in a high COL like CA, but so it goes. That rate hasn't gone up in many years.
  - phonebanshee 8y ago
    Wow, that's low. It's $749 here in Washington.
ta987654321 8y ago
This studio closure hits a little close to me, since I know a few former employees: - They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable. - They were in the planning stages for an original IP, their new leadership realized too late that expensive IP licenses were unsustainable. - Their frantic development pace meant that they their engine was a patchwork of features cobbled together over the years, and not enough resources to rework it, despite their audiences stating that they didn't care enough to fix it. This made development a lot more painful than it should have been. They finally ditched it for Unity, but again, much too late. - They were getting ready to move into a new office building. That's how in the dark everyone at the company was kept. - All of these actions were caused by incompetent management, their staff was and still is amazingly talented.
- bb88 8y ago
  > They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable. Yeah, so this is just pure mismanagement. Either they couldn't do math, or they signed an agreement that required some sort of hidden balloon payment, or they couldn't reign in their costs when managers were allowed to buy things under the sun. > Their frantic development pace meant that they their engine was a patchwork of features cobbled together over the years, and not enough resources to rework it, despite their audiences stating that they didn't care enough to fix it. Again, mismanagement. Someone came up with a term that managers could understand: "Technical Debt". The "Debt" part is the "interest" you pay because you are prioritizing features over maintaining your tech stack. And no doubt would add to their frantic development pace.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    > they couldn't do math Generously, bulk firings like that can be an attempt to add runway, or compensate (painfully) for over-expansion. Telltale management may have been hoping for a few more high-profile releases that would keep them solvent, and cut staff devoted to riskier or lower-margin work in hopes of surviving until those profits hit. When the numbers came in lower than hoped, there was nothing left in the hopper and no more point in delaying the collapse. Of course, everything in Telltale's story screams mismanagement, and the overexpansion was pretty clearly an issue in the first place. A studio producing largely one-trick games around expensive branded properties can't spin up new projects freely for new staff, and even if they do they were competing with their own games to the point of market saturation.
thedataangel 8y ago
This sort of thing makes me very glad I live in a country with legally guaranteed employee entitlements and public healthcare.
- dmh2000 8y ago
  California does have some legally guaranteed entitlements if (edit) there is a mass layoff. Apparently like this case if a company just goes under with no money left that doesn't apply. What is the situation in Europe? The healthcare continues, but if a company has no money who pays the entitlements? Do employers have to fund a reserve? Or the govt pays?
  - thedataangel 8y ago
    In Australia (where I'm from) companies are legally obliged to keep enough cash on hand to cover employee entitlements, which at minimum is pay for the notice period + accrued leave + superannuation (may be more depending on your contract and time served with the company). Above that, employee entitlements get paid out first in the event of bankruptcy/wind-up (i.e. before any investors or creditors see a cent). Also, any director of a company that doesn't comply (i.e. keep enough cash on hand) is likely to 1) get banned from being a director of a company, 2) prosecuted, and worst of all 3) get reamed by the tax-office for the amount owing. Healthcare is almost entirely public here. Employer-provided private health insurance is rare.
thrower123 8y ago
Adventure games seems to be a segment that is especially prone to boom and bust cycles. This has to be at least the third major collapse, following Infocom and LucasArts. Even when well executed, the formula is hard to keep fresh, and the emphasis on story and writing leads to generally poor replayability. Particularly now, in the youtube/twitch age - most of the enjoyment of these kinds of games is watching the story play out, rather than actually playing the game.
- kaycebasques 8y ago
  I didn’t know that this happened at LucasArts. I grew up on Sam & Max, Full Throttle, and Day of the Tentacle. Any good articles about LucasArts’ demise?
  - thrower123 8y ago
    https://www.digitalgamemuseum.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-adventure-games/ https://www.digitalgamemuseum.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-adven... I had forgotten about Sierra, probably because I was more into their Impressions city-builder and strategy games.
- keerthiko 8y ago
  LucasArts, while they made adventure games, was just as if not more well known for their action and franchise titles such as all the Star Wars games. Knights of the Old Republic and sequel, Jedi Knight and several smash hit sequels, TIE Fighter, Republic Commando (basically all the Star Wars games) were squarely in other genres, and all very successful titles. They had some less successful ones as well, which probably fed to their collapse. But in general, the crux of the matter is that games are still adapting to internet-age business models -- selling a title for $30-$60 with higher and higher development standards has been unsustainable for some time now. Going F2P is also hit or miss: not every game can be a League of Legends, and 99% quietly die running deserted servers with a tiny tiny fraction of the player base they may have had in their peak. It's the reason indie games have risen in popularity -- AAA studios are now just hoping to arrive at a hit franchise, and then furtively milk it for as long as they can, still fully aware they're one bad title away from biting the dust. Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of indies throw their life in the pool and a few good games reliably come out. Few hear or care about all the indies that disappear and return to their day jobs after a failed 5-year game. This model works fine for gamers, and making games is quickly becoming a cottage art industry like music or films - yes there are some studios churning out blockbusters, but mostly indies struggling, while consumers just get a glut of stuff at low costs. The unstable part is that most game devs can easily abandon the art for tech jobs with gobs of money, unlike musicians and (most) filmmakers, so it's possible the entire industry could die out if we enter an era of uninspiring games for too long.
ww520 8y ago
I was fortunate (or unfortunate) in my career that the first company I work for was acquired and a massive company wide layoff followed, which woke me up from the Koolaid on dedicating my life to the companies I work for, and I would never let any company determine my fate.
- jarsin 8y ago
  Yup I actually only prefer to work with people that have been laid off before. People that have never been laid off are more likely to be the "Look boss I worked till 3am to finish your stupid project" types. Can't stand working with "do anything for the company" types. They are naive.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
maxxxxx 8y ago
They have quite a few jobs open: https://telltale.com/jobs/ https://telltale.com/jobs/
- EADGBE 8y ago
  Their web developers are gone...
elvirs 8y ago
"One employee, a source told Kotaku, had been working until 3 AM the night before" Moral of the story, never work for any company until 3am.
- dleslie 8y ago
  _Never_ work longer hours than you would be willing to be paid hourly for given your salary. _Never_. I've been interviewed at companies where it was evident from my questions that I would make more working half time at my current employer than the hours typically worked at the prospective employer. Really, I don't see why overtime is so rare in our industry. Not having it is more often an excuse to over utilize and under budget than to deal with extreme situations.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    The industry is largely white collar, and those jobs in America tend not to be unionized. There is also a not insignificant libertarian streak within tech. And games has the unfortunate distinction of having lots of people willing to work pittances for passion.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - vecter 8y ago
    Never is a pretty bad rule. If you want to get ahead in life and advance your career, sometimes working more is the only way to do it. Everyone should decide at the end of the day how much they want to balance work vs. life, but for many people, working hard is the right choice.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      There is an abundance of employment available for software developers; it is a job seeker's market. There's no need to devalue one's labour in order to get ahead. Besides, you're only as valuable to others as you allow yourself to be treated. An employer who is accustomed to exploiting you with ease doesn't have much impetus to improve the terms of your employment.
tdsamardzhiev 8y ago
Man, the gaming industry is crazy.
baud147258 8y ago
This remind me that I've been meaning to pick up the Guardians of the Galaxy TT game, because I like the comics and the movies, but each time I Watch a gameplay video, I go completly meh, it just look so clunky and boring to play. I understand the appeal of those game is not supposed to be in the gameplay part of the game, but in that case, they should have done directly a visual novel instead.
qubax 8y ago
This type of stuff happened a lot during the dotcom bust. It seemed like good times would last forever. People would get hired with great salary, options, benefits, etc and fly across the country to start their new jobs only to find the business had shut down. It's insane. These companies would hold job interviews and hire people knowing full well they are about to go close shop.
fliesblackflags 8y ago
I feel bad for the employees. Getting laid off sucks, I hope they all have better jobs soon. In terms of TTG as a company, they got what they asked for. It's too bad it didn't happen before they hired their first non founders. I'd been watching TTG since before they had a name. The rumors were that the devs from the cancelled Sam & Max game left Lucas to make a Sam & Max game. This was second only to Star Wars for me at the time. I bought it as soon as a physical copy came out. (I don't remember if episodes came on disc or if I had to wait for the season). TTG had built DRM into the game that prevented you from using it in a virtual machine. TTG's website had made it sound like the DRM wouldn't prevent anyone with a physical copy from playing. I contacted TTG. Their rep seemed to be reading of some BS script. He was condescending. He treated me like I didn't know what I was talking about for not wanting to use wine or dual boot. I returned the game to the store* and acquired a copy that had been patched to repair the DRM. After that, if TTG came up in a conversation I made sure to give the person a heads up that they'd just need to pirate it anyway. * This was a small store, their policy defined games rendered unplayable by DRM as defective. This policy caused them to not carry future TTG games.

189 points by bspn 8y ago

People are blaming mismanagement, bad licensing terms etc., and while that all may be true, it is also worth noting that Telltale has not released anything really worth playing since The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. No studio will survive after releasing ~12 bad to average games in a row over 4 years.

k__ 8y ago
The probably felt good because they worked with well known franchises. Sad for some of the employees I guess, but I think the company deserves this outcome.
Bartweiss 8y ago
> No studio will survive after releasing ~12 bad to average games in a row over 4 years. And Telltale was vastly more at risk than most studios because of their episodic games. They basically sold each game with a funnel, and one bad episode jeopardized sales for everything after it. If some studio like Supergiant (or perhaps some more-prolific equivalent) released four years of bad-to-average games, I would still keep an eye on their output in hopes that any one new release might be great. But Telltale was putting out all of these big-license games and had everything past Episode 1 stymied by past weakness like a TV show with a bad opener. It was an almost uniquely vulnerable situation for a studio.

ta201809 8y ago

This sounds very similar to the layoffs that happened with ML and computer vision staff at Shutterstock. I heard it was a super unprofessional sudden thing, poor severance, no continuation of benefits, happening to teams that just had been praised for being high performers for short term business critical product deployments. It’s not a gaming industry thing, and no job segments are safe from this kind of thing. Just a reminder to insist on a clearly stated severance package when you join, and walk away if an employer won’t offer that to you, no matter what you think about your personal leverage in the situation or your seniority or anything else. When it comes to generous severance that is stated in the employment agreement, do not take no for an answer.

yodon 8y ago
If the company burns through all its cash and craters in a financial implosion of bankruptcy and debt like this it's unlikely to matter whether you had a generous severance plan called out in your employment agreement. The best you could hope to do is get in line with the other unsecured creditors for your share of the tiny leavings left after the Aeron chairs are sold at auction.

dogma1138 8y ago

I wonder how much the closure was financial mismanagement vs their business model simply catching up to them. TTG shtick was essentially “emotional abuse simulators” all their games had one trick get you attached to characters and see them die with very little actual player control over it. They were one trick pony and the novelty wore off rather quickly. Their games also were based on expensive franchises and they often offered the first chapter for free in order to hook people in. They also never really developed their formula further the games didn’t became more interactive the same quick time events over and over that never really changed the overall story more than which one of these two will die and or betray you later. I’m actually surprised that they lasted this long given how expensive it is to develop these games even if they weren’t technically impressive recording hours and hours of voice acting is much more expensive than shiny coding shaders.

kevinh 8y ago
> TTG shtick was essentially “emotional abuse simulators” all their games had one trick get you attached to characters and see them die with very little actual player control over it. Some of their games were like this, but others were not. The Tales from the Borderlands series and Guardians of the Galaxy series were primarily vehicles for comedy, and did not rely on the trope you're mentioning.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Borderlands was a betrayal simulator i didn’t really played Guardians of the Galaxy. GoT was essentially the same as TWD. However the gameplay was essentially identical across all of them a semi interactive cut scene that is broken by QTEs which don’t have a major impact on the overall story arc they at best just shift a few characters around the events still unfold as they are. Expensive licenses and a repetitive “point and click” gameplay with dwindling sales just doesnt work and I don’t think it was a surprise to the upper management or the board. And I’m actually surprised it came as a surprise to employees who should’ve been aware of poor sales and high costs.
  - Aeolun 8y ago

btilly 8y ago

The point of severance is to give ex-employees a reason not to sue. However there is left point in protecting from lawsuits when there will be nothing left that can be sued. However I suspect that not paying out owed PTO may be a different story...

vcanales 8y ago
It's really interesting to read this perspective on what severance is in the US, because in my country it definitely is just a right everyone has so that they can land on their feet.
- analog31 8y ago
  In the US, we have unemployment compensation insurance for that purpose. I believe you can collect unemployment even if the employer is insolvent, because it's pre-paid by the employer, and comes out of a collective fund. As I understand it, a severance usually involves the employee signing some sort of agreement.
  - chii 8y ago
    So who pays for this insurance? Is it usually the company, or the employee?
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Both.
    - btilly 8y ago
      Employers. See https://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/uifactsheet.asp https://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/uifactsheet.as... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#United_S... for more information about it. Note that the caps are per state, but is sufficiently low that it doesn't replace a professional level income. Therefore if your lifestyle is based on an income of $50K+, you are strongly advised to acquire personal savings for emergencies in case you lose your job. And C-level executives frequently have contracts which specify severance packages that guarantee their income for an extended time if they are fired. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_parachute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_parachute for more on that. This can lead to weirdly misaligned incentives, like C-level executives on a failing company trying to get fired because their severance package will leave them better off than staying with the sinking ship.

anontechworker 8y ago

I might be misreading/misinterpreting..what was the reason for the closure? The article mentions it was financial but it didn’t seem absolute.

dogma1138 8y ago
Once the novelty wore off people stopped buying their games because they were all the same and hardly a game. So expensive licensing rights, expensive development due to 100’a of hours of voice acting and giving the first chapter for free to hook people in I think resulted in a very poor business model in the long run. If you played one TTG game you played them all they never really developed their formula so it really bacame stale.
flavmartins 8y ago
Another article states that only 2 games were actually profitable. Minecraft Story Mode, and one of the Walking Dead games. All others were failed financially and did not recoup costs.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  The GoT game was likely a huge money sink for them, super expensive franchise and they had to pay for the likeness as well as some of the voice acting of some relatively pretty big actors.
- BlackjackCF 8y ago
  I dunno why I was surprised by this. The company must have been super mismanaged. I know that it's a lot of hard work to put together a game, especially one with an outdated engine, but I'm really surprised that the games Telltale was putting out required such a big crew.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    All the TT games had a lot of voice acting and motion capture, so that'll drive costs up a lot.

lquist 8y ago

Is severance normal at a startup or a game studio? I would think first priority would be contractual obligations (payroll, contractual severance, vendors, etc.) and then only then severance.

cloakandswagger 8y ago
I don't think severance is normal or expected of any business teetering on insolvency.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  In my experience, severance (as part of your employment agreement) is not normal or expected for any job in the USA. I’ve been working for decades and have never seen even a hint of it in any employer’s benefits info. Severance is something only big shot executives get.
  - hellogoodbyeeee 8y ago
    I got a severance package from a part time bank teller job after they closed the branch I worked at. I also got a severance package when a small business I worked at went under. I'd say severance packages are a lot more common than you think they are.
  - tibbon 8y ago
    I've gotten severance (just like, 4 weeks or so?) from the last 3 or 4 companies I've worked for. Just as a datapoint.
- vkou 8y ago
  My father has received severance - not once, but twice from Kodak Canada. The first time was during their bankruptcy, the second time was because they cost-optimized most of the senior people out of his project.
- grigjd3 8y ago
  Severance is "keep your mouth shut" money. If the company is tanking, there's no reason for it.

bb88 8y ago

If you think about employment as a business transaction, then you should insist on "Cash Up Front", e.g. signing bonus, higher salary, or immediate stock ownership to offset your personal risk. Joining a company is more of a risk to you as an employee than it is to them in hiring you. Basically it comes down to asking for "Cash Up Front". Expecting a cash settlement on the backend of a failed business transaction is fraught with perils of not getting your investment back in the company. And asking for severance is no different.

skh 8y ago
In an ideal world this would be feasible. Few people have the pricing power for their labor to do this. I'd classify what you call a failed business transaction as a failure of government to enact necessary labor laws.
- bb88 8y ago
  So in a world where there's a glut of labor, you're absolutely right. We, however, are not in a glut of labor for software engineers and game designers. And besides, if you explained to the employer the risks you forsee in joining their company, they will most likely understand that reason for asking for a higher salary than the norm.
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    We, however, are not in a glut of labor for software engineers and game designers If that's true, why are you folks working in open offices and are wearing noise-cancelling headphones?
    - BigJono 8y ago
      Because the price of rent in major city centres is ludicrous, I assume.
  - skh 8y ago
    I’m thinking beyond software engineers. I’m thinking about people who don’t have pricing power for their labor and are not at all in a position to negotiate. They have to rely on government to help them with unequal balance in power when it comes to pricing for their labor.

slg 8y ago

The worst part for many of these people is that our country still links health insurance with your employer. It is bad enough to suddenly lose your job and primary source of income, but that type of thing is often unavoidable when a company goes belly up. However only getting a week's notice before all your health insurance benefits disappear is the type of thing that just shouldn't happen in this country.

tyingq 8y ago
Also notable that buying health insurance on your own, versus through your employer is typically 2 to 4x the cost.
- secabeen 8y ago
  You can purchase your old benefit through FMLA for up to 36 months in an involuntary departure, but you pay 104% of the cost that previously was split between you and the employer.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    What if your employer went bankrupt?
    - delinka 8y ago
      What does the cause matter? Company's dead, the employee "involuntarily departed."
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        The cause matters because the right to individually buy into the existing employer-sponsored group health plan. So, if the employer no longer exists, and the employer-sponsored health plan no longer exists, the right to buy in is meaningless.
        8y ago

bradford 8y ago

Anyone know what the unemployment benefits are like in CA? In WA state, "Unemployment benefits are made available through taxes paid by your former employer(s) to partially replace your regular earnings and help you meet expenses while you look for another job." Not sure what the situation is in CA but I'd hope that, in the absence of a severance package, there's something else that can help them land cleanly here...

georgyo 8y ago
A lot of things like COBRA go though your former employer. I wonder how many post-employment benfits work at when the former employer no longer exists.
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Domenic_S 8y ago
$450/week maximum. There's a waiting period (2 weeks?) as well.
- JBlue42 8y ago
  Yup, without tacking out taxes. More like $410 I think when taxes are taken out. Luckily, the State doesn't tax it as well. I learned when looking more deeper into it that some states will do so. I think it's kind of shitty that it is taxed, especially if you live in a high COL like CA, but so it goes. That rate hasn't gone up in many years.
- phonebanshee 8y ago
  Wow, that's low. It's $749 here in Washington.

ta987654321 8y ago

This studio closure hits a little close to me, since I know a few former employees: - They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable. - They were in the planning stages for an original IP, their new leadership realized too late that expensive IP licenses were unsustainable. - Their frantic development pace meant that they their engine was a patchwork of features cobbled together over the years, and not enough resources to rework it, despite their audiences stating that they didn't care enough to fix it. This made development a lot more painful than it should have been. They finally ditched it for Unity, but again, much too late. - They were getting ready to move into a new office building. That's how in the dark everyone at the company was kept. - All of these actions were caused by incompetent management, their staff was and still is amazingly talented.

bb88 8y ago
> They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable. Yeah, so this is just pure mismanagement. Either they couldn't do math, or they signed an agreement that required some sort of hidden balloon payment, or they couldn't reign in their costs when managers were allowed to buy things under the sun. > Their frantic development pace meant that they their engine was a patchwork of features cobbled together over the years, and not enough resources to rework it, despite their audiences stating that they didn't care enough to fix it. Again, mismanagement. Someone came up with a term that managers could understand: "Technical Debt". The "Debt" part is the "interest" you pay because you are prioritizing features over maintaining your tech stack. And no doubt would add to their frantic development pace.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > they couldn't do math Generously, bulk firings like that can be an attempt to add runway, or compensate (painfully) for over-expansion. Telltale management may have been hoping for a few more high-profile releases that would keep them solvent, and cut staff devoted to riskier or lower-margin work in hopes of surviving until those profits hit. When the numbers came in lower than hoped, there was nothing left in the hopper and no more point in delaying the collapse. Of course, everything in Telltale's story screams mismanagement, and the overexpansion was pretty clearly an issue in the first place. A studio producing largely one-trick games around expensive branded properties can't spin up new projects freely for new staff, and even if they do they were competing with their own games to the point of market saturation.

thedataangel 8y ago

This sort of thing makes me very glad I live in a country with legally guaranteed employee entitlements and public healthcare.

dmh2000 8y ago
California does have some legally guaranteed entitlements if (edit) there is a mass layoff. Apparently like this case if a company just goes under with no money left that doesn't apply. What is the situation in Europe? The healthcare continues, but if a company has no money who pays the entitlements? Do employers have to fund a reserve? Or the govt pays?
- thedataangel 8y ago
  In Australia (where I'm from) companies are legally obliged to keep enough cash on hand to cover employee entitlements, which at minimum is pay for the notice period + accrued leave + superannuation (may be more depending on your contract and time served with the company). Above that, employee entitlements get paid out first in the event of bankruptcy/wind-up (i.e. before any investors or creditors see a cent). Also, any director of a company that doesn't comply (i.e. keep enough cash on hand) is likely to 1) get banned from being a director of a company, 2) prosecuted, and worst of all 3) get reamed by the tax-office for the amount owing. Healthcare is almost entirely public here. Employer-provided private health insurance is rare.

thrower123 8y ago

Adventure games seems to be a segment that is especially prone to boom and bust cycles. This has to be at least the third major collapse, following Infocom and LucasArts. Even when well executed, the formula is hard to keep fresh, and the emphasis on story and writing leads to generally poor replayability. Particularly now, in the youtube/twitch age - most of the enjoyment of these kinds of games is watching the story play out, rather than actually playing the game.

kaycebasques 8y ago
I didn’t know that this happened at LucasArts. I grew up on Sam & Max, Full Throttle, and Day of the Tentacle. Any good articles about LucasArts’ demise?
- thrower123 8y ago
  https://www.digitalgamemuseum.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-adventure-games/ https://www.digitalgamemuseum.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-adven... I had forgotten about Sierra, probably because I was more into their Impressions city-builder and strategy games.
keerthiko 8y ago
LucasArts, while they made adventure games, was just as if not more well known for their action and franchise titles such as all the Star Wars games. Knights of the Old Republic and sequel, Jedi Knight and several smash hit sequels, TIE Fighter, Republic Commando (basically all the Star Wars games) were squarely in other genres, and all very successful titles. They had some less successful ones as well, which probably fed to their collapse. But in general, the crux of the matter is that games are still adapting to internet-age business models -- selling a title for $30-$60 with higher and higher development standards has been unsustainable for some time now. Going F2P is also hit or miss: not every game can be a League of Legends, and 99% quietly die running deserted servers with a tiny tiny fraction of the player base they may have had in their peak. It's the reason indie games have risen in popularity -- AAA studios are now just hoping to arrive at a hit franchise, and then furtively milk it for as long as they can, still fully aware they're one bad title away from biting the dust. Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of indies throw their life in the pool and a few good games reliably come out. Few hear or care about all the indies that disappear and return to their day jobs after a failed 5-year game. This model works fine for gamers, and making games is quickly becoming a cottage art industry like music or films - yes there are some studios churning out blockbusters, but mostly indies struggling, while consumers just get a glut of stuff at low costs. The unstable part is that most game devs can easily abandon the art for tech jobs with gobs of money, unlike musicians and (most) filmmakers, so it's possible the entire industry could die out if we enter an era of uninspiring games for too long.

ww520 8y ago

I was fortunate (or unfortunate) in my career that the first company I work for was acquired and a massive company wide layoff followed, which woke me up from the Koolaid on dedicating my life to the companies I work for, and I would never let any company determine my fate.

jarsin 8y ago
Yup I actually only prefer to work with people that have been laid off before. People that have never been laid off are more likely to be the "Look boss I worked till 3am to finish your stupid project" types. Can't stand working with "do anything for the company" types. They are naive.

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maxxxxx 8y ago

They have quite a few jobs open: https://telltale.com/jobs/ https://telltale.com/jobs/

EADGBE 8y ago
Their web developers are gone...

elvirs 8y ago

"One employee, a source told Kotaku, had been working until 3 AM the night before" Moral of the story, never work for any company until 3am.

dleslie 8y ago
_Never_ work longer hours than you would be willing to be paid hourly for given your salary. _Never_. I've been interviewed at companies where it was evident from my questions that I would make more working half time at my current employer than the hours typically worked at the prospective employer. Really, I don't see why overtime is so rare in our industry. Not having it is more often an excuse to over utilize and under budget than to deal with extreme situations.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  The industry is largely white collar, and those jobs in America tend not to be unionized. There is also a not insignificant libertarian streak within tech. And games has the unfortunate distinction of having lots of people willing to work pittances for passion.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- vecter 8y ago
  Never is a pretty bad rule. If you want to get ahead in life and advance your career, sometimes working more is the only way to do it. Everyone should decide at the end of the day how much they want to balance work vs. life, but for many people, working hard is the right choice.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    There is an abundance of employment available for software developers; it is a job seeker's market. There's no need to devalue one's labour in order to get ahead. Besides, you're only as valuable to others as you allow yourself to be treated. An employer who is accustomed to exploiting you with ease doesn't have much impetus to improve the terms of your employment.

tdsamardzhiev 8y ago

Man, the gaming industry is crazy.

baud147258 8y ago

This remind me that I've been meaning to pick up the Guardians of the Galaxy TT game, because I like the comics and the movies, but each time I Watch a gameplay video, I go completly meh, it just look so clunky and boring to play. I understand the appeal of those game is not supposed to be in the gameplay part of the game, but in that case, they should have done directly a visual novel instead.

qubax 8y ago

This type of stuff happened a lot during the dotcom bust. It seemed like good times would last forever. People would get hired with great salary, options, benefits, etc and fly across the country to start their new jobs only to find the business had shut down. It's insane. These companies would hold job interviews and hire people knowing full well they are about to go close shop.

fliesblackflags 8y ago

I feel bad for the employees. Getting laid off sucks, I hope they all have better jobs soon. In terms of TTG as a company, they got what they asked for. It's too bad it didn't happen before they hired their first non founders. I'd been watching TTG since before they had a name. The rumors were that the devs from the cancelled Sam & Max game left Lucas to make a Sam & Max game. This was second only to Star Wars for me at the time. I bought it as soon as a physical copy came out. (I don't remember if episodes came on disc or if I had to wait for the season). TTG had built DRM into the game that prevented you from using it in a virtual machine. TTG's website had made it sound like the DRM wouldn't prevent anyone with a physical copy from playing. I contacted TTG. Their rep seemed to be reading of some BS script. He was condescending. He treated me like I didn't know what I was talking about for not wanting to use wine or dual boot. I returned the game to the store* and acquired a copy that had been patched to repair the DRM. After that, if TTG came up in a conversation I made sure to give the person a heads up that they'd just need to pirate it anyway. * This was a small store, their policy defined games rendered unplayable by DRM as defective. This policy caused them to not carry future TTG games.