History unfortunately repeats itself as Telltale Games lays off 'most' of its staff

06.10.2023 - 12:05 / pcgamer.com / Of Its / Lays Off

Telltale Games has laid off an unknown portion of its staff, in an unfortunate deja vu moment for a handful of its employees. 

Word of the layoffs first began circulating when Jonah Huang, a former cinematic artist for the developer, publisheda series of tweets that claimed Telltale had let go «most» of its staff in early September, adding that he was unable to comment on the status of The Wolf Among Us 2—which was delayed earlier this year—thanks to being under NDA.

For Huang, it's the second time this has happened to him. It's been five years to the month since the original Telltale crumbled, letting go the majority of its staff to leave a skeleton crew in September 2018 before officially shutting up shop on October 11, 2018. Half a decade and a second Telltale layoff later, Huang ended his tweet thread by saying: «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.»

The developer had been silent at the time of Huang's thread, but has now released a statement on Twitter confirming that a percentage of its team has been laid off. «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.»

While the statement doesn't comment on The Wolf Among Us 2 specifically, or specify how many employees have been let go, it does say «All projects in development are still in production, and we have no further updates at this time.»

The layoffs continue to propel what has become a regrettable trend across the games industry right now. A week ago saw over 800 employees at Epic Games lose their jobs, with countless other redundancies being made at studios this year like Activision Blizzard, BioWare, numerous Embracer Group developers including Beamdog, Crypt of the Necrodancer's Brace Yourself Games, Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, Firaxis, Witcher spinoff studio The Molasses Flood, Unity and more.