It's never good news when someone (in this case, a lot of someones) loses their job.

I have never played a Telltale game. Theoretically speaking, if I wanted to try at least one to see what all the fuss was about, which one would be a good entry point? Preferably a stand-alone title... and I don't really like horror.

Although in theory connected to the rest of the Borderlands-Franchise, TalesFromTheBoarderlands works as standalone game and a very good entry point. I haven´t played anything else from the Borderlands-Franchise (as they are DRM-exclusive) and enjoyed TFTB a lot.

Well, it wasn't a boycott conclusion. Nothing organized like that; and I wouldn't even discourage friends from buying their games.

I have bought some of their newest titles, but only when they went for crazy cheap prices or in bundles, and only when the seasons were complete. My experience from TWD also prepared me to search for those aforementioned specific issues in the Steam forums or other gaming communities -- and what do you know, those were never really addressed.

So, you know, not boycott, but be really cautious about future purchases. I'm sure that can't be good for a game company either, even if not as sever a blow to their sales as a boycott.

I'd expect other adventure gamers with a similar experience as mine would be as cautious, but who knows.

Got it, sorry for doing some kind overinterpretation. Kind of worried I´ve made this mistake, because I´m doing things like you quite often. Therefor, the possiblity should have definitely crossed my mind.

I've been a Telltale fan from 2008 on, and believe me, squeezing those episodes through a 56k modem was hard work. I've registered on their forum for Sam & Max Season 2, and during the following three years, the place became a key community experience for me. There were so many, so incredibly talented and creative people on that forum, and they were willing to pour so much love into their fan creations for the developers. You wouldn't believe it these short years later, when the entirety of game culture seems so utterly toxic.

They eventually stopped making games to my taste, old school adventure gamer that I am, so I left the moderator post I had acquired in the meantime and joined other cults, I mean developer forums, in 2013/14.

Telltale always had a talent to hire amazing people. But the eternal crunch that their episodic schedule generated was real, it wasn't fair, and it took a toll. I can't blame the higher ups for heading down a business lane that promised the big revenue, but I can blame them for doing so in a work environment so hostile to a healthy work-life balance. But in case you've followed the news lately, Telltale was in the process of internal reform after their old head honcho, who is now pseudo-empathetically cackling on his twitter, was booted and in turn sued Telltale for millions.

Maybe they could have turned out great again, but they never got the chance, and I'm sad because of it. 250 amazing people, none of whom, I promise, have "made" any of "your" games shitty, are out on the streets in a week. The 25 remaining people will likely be laid off by the end of the year.

This is a tragedy.

Telltale came out of nowhere to give the ailing adventure genre a few surprising new high points. With wits and marketing smarts, but almost no capital, they came to work with some of the most popular licenses in the world, including the Walking Dead license when a TV series wasn't even in the works. Most of that upswing they performed before 2013 with less than 100 employees, as the the anti-thesis of the AAA. It was the Telltale that I loved. It could have gone on to be great, and it didn't.

To all the people who worked at Telltale, this week as well as especially about eight years ago, and those who tirelessly bombarded them with fan love around the start of the decade, I'm thinking of you.

Which is exactly why 99% of all reviews are completely useless - the insane obsession to give some kind of a grade does no good.

When I wrote long ago for a webzine giving some final grade in reviews was always problematic. I hated it, and it always seemed wrong.

Now when I write reviews every now and then on my own, I make sure that
1) there's absolutely no grade of any kind, all information about the game and its quality is in the text (yes, you gotta actually read!)
2) the review makes very few, preferably no cross-referencing to other games, but tries to stand entirely on its own.

Especially the second part is very challenging. The temptation to write "Monkey Island did this thing better" is almost overwhelming, but especially from newbie reader's point of view should be avoided. You can't expect a reader to have played any games that you have.

And this is off-topic here... I don't think reviews were the problem that did Telltale harm that they couldn't overcome. I believe some of their most critically praised games were among their least sold titles, actually.

I'm sorry to hear people are losing their jobs but I won't miss the company. Since they released The Walking Dead, the company became a one trick pony. They lost all the clever wittiness that you'll find in Tales of Monkey Island and Sam & Max etc.

And at the same time, there is always another idea: How to tell developers as a group how to get better in game making. Which mistakes should not be made and so on. This idea often desperatly needs these "Monkey Island did this thing better" stuff to work well. It´s a pity and not only for game reviews, but for every form of art reviews. As long as you are dealing with a form of art, where idea and execution aren´t completly the same thing.

I hope those developers can find new work, but this is not surprising. As I said on their forums. This was avoidable but clearly an issue with mismanagement. The problem seems quite simple, and like it was ignored for the last 5 years. At least if their sales numbers are true. The immediate closure suggests they are entirely true.

I hope GOG puts whatever Telltale games they have on sale. I was buying Telltale games directly from their site for a long long time (for multiple reasons- one of which was that they were sending DVDs of the game to people who bought from their store directly originally) so I have several games on Telltales site that it appears will now become inaccessible. It is also unclear how this will affect their DRM system which, at least from their site, requires you to login to servers to download most of the game and "login" or whatever. I don't know if GOG versions have this DRM on them or not. I just know that other than the physical copies I have (which do have the DRM on them- edit: or maybe they don't the system requirements on all the cases do not list an active internet connection as a requirement) I will have zero access to those games anymore when the site officially disappears for good.

We'll see, I guess. Or maybe I'll just have to wait and buy them all again one at a time if I ever feel like playing them (I have been thinking about playing the Sam and Max games again).

And that's why you should never trust digital only releases.

RadonGOG's suggestion for Tales from the Borderlands is a good one, but it does feature one prominent character from Borderlands 2 and might potentially spoil something about the latter, if you ever intend to play that game afterwards. If that bothers you and you want something even more standalone (at least in terms of videogames), you coudl also go for The Wolf Among Us. But since these games are all about the story and the characters, just choose the one that appeals to you most.

This is sad news, although I must admit that by now their games had fed me up. I hope GOG can launch a final sale of all their games to give us a chance to grab the missing titles at a decent price.

Well now I’m glad I held off on buying the last walking dead game since it will either be unfinished or more likely have the final episodes released as a buggy mess that never gets fixed so they can say it’s finished and not provide refunds.

Nope, very unlikely that will happen. GOG / MS / Sony will pull the last season from their stores as soon as they hear about Telltale getting shut down to avoid problems with angry customers in the future.

I do not expect Episode 2 to be released in a few days UNLESS it would be a better ending to the story than episode 1.

Show is over, but this happens if you buy into an unfinished product.

If nobody is left to work on TWD, than there will never be any additional content/bugfixes for the released episodes.

I hope their catalog will go on sale a last time, I would get "Guardians of the Galaxy" and be done with it.

I'll really miss The Wolf Among Us Season 2. I loved the first season, and was waiting for the sequel already announced some time ago (that will never happen... (ಥ﹏ಥ) )

Basically this. Under modern Western capitalism, you're not entitled to a job you like (or any job at all), but welfare is an option. Under Soviet communism, you're entitled to a job (or VT and a job if there's unmet demand). Expecting certain people to get paid what they want for doing what they want is twitter cancer.