Why is everybody assuming that the games will be removed from the store? I mean, they could, but there are other games on GOG whose studios don't exist anymore. Surely there will still be a rights holder who will prefer to have the games available, as opposed to hidden and forgotten.

Thank you both for your suggestions!

Probably because there was at least one precedence. Telltale's Wallace & Gromit was removed from all digital stores for good after the license ran out, and AFAIK it's not available anywhere anymore. I think the Bone games were nowhere to be found either for quite a while, but they're available on Steam now, so you're not wrong to assume that some games may be saved.

In most cases the studio did not exist anymore for quite some time. So others picked up the rights and approached GOG. In this case the studio just went out of business so it's unlikely those licences will be picked up that fast and therefore most of us expect the games to go away for some time at least.

I honestly didn't like Telltale's games much. Their pre-TWD games were rather mediocre adventure games, as far as I'm concerned, and TWD disappointed me in all sorts of other ways. Never played any later Telltale games but apparently they only kept going even further with exactly the kind of stuff I didn't like about TWD Season 1.

That said: them closing their doors comes as quite a shock to me. From where I was standing it looked like they were doing very well. Had no absolutely no idea that things were going this badly in the background. Hopefully this sends out a message to other studios, though, that want to apply conveyor belt practices to video game development.

There have been many games removed from GOG due to licence issues.
Like said, one of them being Wallace & Gromit from Telltale.

Nobody knows how their contracts and agreements are worded, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a clause that states that in the case of bankruptcy or company dissolvement all rights revert to IP rights holders. That would protect IP holders' interests and allow them to make new licence contracts.

Of course Telltale as a company exists, and is even functional to some extent. But considering that they have laid off their staff twice within the past 12 months, you don't need a crystal ball to see that there's a realistic chance of them (or someone else, investors or whatever) pulling the plug permanently.

Other studios are not comparable to Telltale situation. For instance, Sierra games are unique IPs, so although they have changed ownership many times, it has been more or less a straightforward situation. LucasArts is a bit more complicated, but as LucasArts was using LucasFilm IPs, and Disney bought the whole package, there's not a big problem there either.

I think the closest thing we have to Telltale situation is Interplay and their Star Trek games. Against all assumed odds, those games were brought back to sale. But it took what, like, 15 years or more?

Also Telltale hasn't shown much interest in contract renewals even when they were active. Where's CSI? Where's Wallace & Gromit? Where's Law&Order?

For reference:
http://telltale.com/support/article/why-is-poker-night-2-no-longer-available/
http://telltale.com/support/article/why-is-wallace-gromit-s-grand-adventures-no-longer-available-/
http://telltale.com/support/article/why-is-law-order-legacies-is-no-longer-available-/

I liked their point 'n' click adventures (Tales of Monkey Island, Sam and Max). Back to the Future was ok but showed a direction that I wasn't much interested in: easy visual novels with minimal interactivity.

That broke their necks more or less. The last Telltale games weren't games anymore.

The were visual novels. No problem there. BUT...

- they had too many people making them
- they had too many and TOO EXPENSIVE IPs (Marvel, Batman, Walking Dead, Minecraft...)
- they were ugly in comparison to the "normal" visual novel
- they were released in episodic form
- they were technically BAD and / or technically very dated (engine)
- they seem to have devalued themselves by being in to many "monster sales"

If you combine all those problems you cannot compete with "other" visual novels, which are way better and cheaper produced and mostly sell themselves through their anime art...

They had to cut costs years ago (before Marvel, before Batman), now it is too late. I saw their demise incoming, but had thought this last TWD series would have kept them afloat till the end of this year at least.

Yeah, now I kind of regret not getting "Guadians of the Galaxy" in the sale a few weeks ago (have all their other titles except the Minecraft stuff and the open ended TWD Final Season), but somewhere in between sales you have to decide what to get and Telltale has gotten a deep discount buying level in the last years by their own means/quality. Sad but true.

There's a small chance that they will put up sales in the near future.
If they are seriously out of money, they might have some super sales to draw some money in to cover the salaries for their skeleton crew. That would devalue their catalog even further, but probably give them an extra month to hang on.
This is only speculation, of course, but that's what I would be considering right about now if I were trying to lead Telltale in some direction right now.

Personally, I gave up my hopes of seeing Jurassic Park DRM-free, so I did yesterday, for the very first time in my life, buy a Steam game key from a third party reseller. I guess you can once in your life spend 99 cents like that?
At least I have some kind of DRM infected copy of that now, if the games get pulled entirely.

The rest of the games I have either here on GOG, on Humble, or physical discs.
I guess for CSI and Law&Order there's no way to get them legally.

I mostly agree with your post except for this bit. I don't think that Telltale games directly compete with visual novels, I see them more as interactive TV series than visual novels. Visual Novels are about reading, Telltale games are about cinematics. There is a common denominator in that both are focused on narration and provide only limited interactivity, and both can feature elements of Choice & Consequences, but you don't get the same experience from a visual novel that you get from a Telltale game, like you don't get the same experience from reading a (comic) book that you get from watching a movie. You have to be in the mood for either and can't easily replace one by the other.

That's true. Telltale games (the cinematic ones) were always a special experience.

Some say they were all the same. But the fact is they weren't. It was always about the story. And the stories were great.
It's a shame the games weren't financially succesfull. I for one did buy and play every last one. And I never got tired of them. On the contrary, I was going to buy every telltale title there would have been in the future.

Telltale also acts as the publisher for all their games. If they shut down completely (meaning not even keeping a couple of staff members exclusively for publishing), somebody else will have to pick up the slack. Somebody else who, after looking at the not-so-stellar commercial performance of Telltale's later games, might not think it worthwhile. Doubly true if the licenses signed with the various studios (2K, Marvel, Warner Bros, etc.) are not transferable and would need to be renegotiated for each single title.

You are right there, but the problem is, that there is no usergroup interrested in BUYING interactive movies anymore.

Today you have your game enthusiasts and the visual novel enthusiasts. Both groups tend to invest money in their hobby.

Telltale can only sell to one of those groups and most gamers will reject them because "no game". Visual novel fans will not completely ignore them, but Telltale does not compete with their other visual novels because of problems mentioned above.

Telltale for years had no real target demographic BUYING their games, if you could watch them for free on youtube. They completely trashed their own buyer base in the last few years and they knew that...

There are a few of us left tho.

I don't know, I see myself in between these groups. I'm neither a fan of visual novels nor in the camp that rejects titles for being "no games". I do enjoy playing so called "walking simulators", Telltale games, CYOA and other narrative experiments from time to time. I don't know any statistics though on how big your two groups are compared to the more open-minded players in the middle of them. And I admit I don't know whether I actually bought any Telltale game at full price. For me, it wasn't so much the genre but the lack of original IPs, the DRM, the terrible support, the high prices, the episodic releases, as well as the frequent bundles and sales that kept me from throwing my money at Telltale. I did enjoy most of their games though, even if I wasn't really enthusiastic about them (of the interactive TV style games, Tales from the Borderlands and Wolf Among Us were my favorites).

The size of a usergroup is not the problem, it is their spending habits we must think about.

Gamers tend to hand over much money (DLCs, lootboxes, season passes do not come out of nowhere) and the (small) visual novel fanbase is quite happy to throw money at the studios, too, so even it is small, it is a lucrative market.

But I must confess, like you the last Telltale Game I bought "normally" were the 2.+3.Season of "The Walking Dead", because of the quality of Season 1. The Batmans I got through Pinatas (yeah, I paid frigging 3 Bucks for them each!), otherwise I would not have been interrested (bugs, badly optimized...).

And I think the users posting here stand for the majority of people who still handed them money. So go figure...