Telltale Games' last remaining employees who were kept on after the mass firing a few weeks ago to maintain important administrative functions and potentially complete a Minecraft-related project, have now been fired too. Although legally and officially the company may not have folded yet, it may as well have, as nobody is around to do any work anymore.
"Heeeeyyyy remember how there was going to be a skeleton crew staying on for a while and I was part of it? Nah, jk, we all just got laid off, too," said previous Telltale narrative designer, Rachel Noel, on Twitter (via PCgamesN).
I think there was some misunderstanding about my earlier message... There are still good people at the company. MY team is done.
— Retchel Necronoelicon (@anameformyself) October 4, 2018
Considering there have been calls from the gaming community and some ex-Telltale developers to bring in outside parties to help finish outstanding projects like The Walking Dead's last season, this may not be the real end of Telltale just yet, but in essence, it's a dead company. In total more than 200 people have been let go, many of whom relocated to work at the long-standing developer and there is precious little video game development work within San Rafael, California, so most of the staff will need to move if they want to maintain a job in the industry.
Following the firings, a number of developers and creatives within the video game world have called for changes to be made to some of the more common practices. The dreaded "crunch" where developers are expected to work 60-80 hours weeks is one of the most commonly complained about "standards" that has developed over the past few decades.
