The Wolf Among Us creators Telltale Games have laid off many of their staff shortly after the acquisition of U.K. studio Flavourworks. The developers suggested “market conditions” were the main cause of the staff reduction, though for the time being the company is still planning to proceed with future titles.
While Polygon journalist Natalie Carpenter reported the news in an Oct. 5 tweet, it seems most of their staff were laid off in early September, according to one ex-Telltale employee. This spurred calls for unionization from former staff members in the gaming industry.
The layoffs came just two months after Telltale’s acquisition of Flavourworks, which was wrapped up around Aug. 10. The narrative-based game devs purchased the “mobile first” publishing studio for an undisclosed sum.
This is the second time Telltale has sacked a large portion of its development staff, with 250 people losing their jobs in 2018. These layoffs have left 25 people tasked with fulfilling prior commitments to the board and previous partners.
Over the years, Telltale has been responsible for story titles like Minecraft: Story Mode, Batman: A Telltale Series, and Tales From the Borderlands. Their narrative and player-choice game design in The Walking Dead: A Telltale Series was revered as one of the best video games to come out of 2012 in that genre.
The devs didn’t shed light on whether The Wolf Among Us 2 would be impacted by these layoffs. The title was originally slated for 2023 but was pushed back to 2024.
All the studio’s titles are still in production, according to Telltale, so odds are we’ll still get to play TWAU2 when it arrives sometime next year.
Dot Esports has reached out to Telltale to confirm if these were the only planned layoffs or if there are more coming in the near future.
