The tale of Telltale Games is much more than just a game studio that fell on hard times and had to rebuild itself. It’s a tale of a company that, at one point, had some of the most unique narrative-driven titles in the world and yet also had one of the most abusive in-house cultures in the world. Back in 2018, they had such an oppressive regime going on that they basically shut down the entire studio in a single day without taking care of any of the workers who had slaved away on their titles. They were rebuilt and seemed to be coming back strong, and now, it seems to be happening again.
But don’t take our word for it, cinematic artist Jonah Huang had worked for both “versions” of Telltale Games, and yet on Twitter yesterday, he revealed a hard truth that he and many others on staff at the “reborn” company had been laid off and that they had NDA’s that wouldn’t let them “cause any harm” to the company after they left. But he found a loophole by talking about his being let go, and rallied the gaming community to unionize:
Later on, he stated: “This is a departure from what I usually post, which is just pixel art / stuff about my game. But this is extremely important to me, as someone that genuinely cares about the people who works in games. I hate seeing abuse and exploitation continue. Telltale gave me a good deal this time around, but still, it ended the same way most jobs in games end: a layoff, not a retirement. I ask my fellow game devs to fight for better.”
Naturally, his words got people wondering if what he said was true, and sure enough, Telltale sent a message to Geoff Keighley stating:
“Due to current market conditions, we regrettably had to let some of our Telltale team go recently. We did not take this action lightly, and our commitment to storytelling and finding new ways to do so remains the same. We are grateful to everyone for their dedication along this journey, and we are working to support everyone impacted. All projects currently in development are still in production, and we have no further updates at this time.”
It should be noted that the CEO of Telltale was talking in August about how everything was going well and they were having no issues within the company. Clearly, that was a false statement.
