I literally own every Telltale game except that one and TWDS4.
Maybe they got there too late
Edit: Unless you mean that is even worse lol
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Telltale Games shutting down after Minecraft Story Mode [Update: TWD S4, ST, TWAU 2 cancelled]
- Thread starter CGiRanger
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I literally own every Telltale game except that one and TWDS4.
Maybe they got there too late
Edit: Unless you mean that is even worse lol
It's just not how life or business works. Just like when someone is convicted of stealing money and ordered to repay , if they don't have it victims never get repaid (see Madoff).
Companies have even more protection because the laws are written to encourage business. Seen many companies shut down and not even pay out owed wages to employees let alone consumers.
It's up to you to weigh if a preorder incentive is worth it if the project isn't finished and takes the funding company out with it.
If you are counting on companies to protect you as a consumer before they protect themselves then you will be disappointed.
Not nesessarily. Australia's Krome Studios went through basically this exact thing back in 2009 - went from 400ish people to next to nothing. Doesn't mean they don't exist - they are still developing games, just in a far more limited capacity. They've been porting Ty The Tasmanian Tiger titles to PC recently. They're back to nearly nothing, but they'll definitaly have to completely change their plans for development.
No, it's a lot better. Worth checking out, and as good of a swan song as we're gonna get, I guess.
In most cases, you don't cut off the majority of your staff down to a skeleton crew, cancel several projects all at once including an ongoing one, have a huge make or break deal fall through, and then survive. They can, but I doubt it.
A shame then that they go there late :/
For me Guardians was their worst game and I think many costumers gave up then
So, Sony isn't supposed to give me a refund despite the fact that nothing in their TOS suggests I won't get what I pay for? Yeah, I don't think so. I smell a lawsuit if it plays out as such, and enough people have pre-oredered. They are protecting themselves by offering a refund on this instance, and ensuring people feel safe investing in the PSN ecosystem.
Maybe it's easier to find good people in the Bay Area. Still strange that they never thought about moving. The USA are a big country, I'm sure the cost of living is lower in Maine, Colorado or Virginia.
I'm pretty sure that there's no guarantee you'll like what you'll get though, so Telltale could avoid this by submitting anything as the missing episodes. Frankly I'm surprised something like that in the past doesn't come to mind. Alpng the lines of "Gamers angry over WD4E3 being a reskin of NOTGTAV".
I think Telltale screwed up really bad when they put The Walking Dead Season 2 on a Steam sale before the full season was out. It pretty much told consumers that you can get the game for a discount and still see the ending day 1 as soon as it's out. It's why I never buy these episodic games until the full thing is out, including non-Telltale ones like Life is Strange and Hitman.
Not sure what you're referring to with the last sentence, but no, if TellTale releases something, anything, for the last two episodes, even if of the worst possible quality, then no, I am not entitled to anything. As you say, no guarantee I'll like what I get. However, it doesn't sound like even that will happen at this rate. In the case it doesn't happen, I have paid for a season pass that was promised to offer me four episodes, but only two will be delivered. That is not a fair transaction.
Also, to be clear, I'm not saying this on TellTale. It actually isn't, because they would have no direct way to reimburse us that I'm aware of even if they had the money to do so (and they clearly don't). It actually falls on Sony/MS/Nintendo/Steam etc., as they have promised and sold a product that they can no longer deliver.
I can assure you that in Colorado the cost of living is slowly but surely rising, mostly because a lot of Californians think my home state is California but cheaper.
No clue why there's no game development here besides Deck Nine, I think?
You can sue whoever you want if the business has no money after the court examines their bankruptcy, even if you win in court there is no money to pay you.
You are thinking too literal, I'm just saying if the financials are true then Sony also won't recoup the preorder money (minus their cut) they have passed on to telltale. They will be just another person or entity on the list of all the people Telltale owes. Once telltale is gone , it's just going to be a loss for anyone still owed.
An interesting note is I wonder what Sony and others actually say as far as refund , are they responsible for a developer misleading or changing scope?
I expect bigger companies to refund because it's good PR and won't cost them much in comparison to potential bad PR. They just will most likely never be repaid by Telltale.
Well, that's that then....as best confirmation that we have had so far that Eps 3 and 4 are not happening. Very sad indeed...what a heart wrenching scenario for all involved. The only hope now is that we get some sort of closure for Clem's story either via leaked scripts or in comic form.
They are responsible. I am talking about Sony/MS/Nintendo etc., here, not TellTale, to be clear. TT is basically gone, and they have no way to reimburse anyone. However, these aforementioned companies have promised and sold a product they can no longer deliver, which is extremely bad PR if no refund or reimbursement of any kind is made. It hurts customer confidence in their ecosystem, and again, nothing in their TOS or policies suggest I won't get what I pay for after a transaction on PSN, Steam, etc. It is on them to offer a refund (a partial $10 refund would be fair, considering half of the season was delivered). That is how I feel on the matter, at least.
If no refund is made, then I most certainly would take your advice and never pre-order from PSN again. In this way, it hurts Sony and other companies more to not offer a refund, if consumer confidence in them is hurt by such incidents.
Coincidentally (or not?) TWD Season 1 was the only TellTale game I ever bought, and I didn't even buy the DLC for it.
has there been official word that all these projects are canceled?
i've only seen stories citing sources, but not press releases. if they haven't officially canceled it, there's still a chance they're planning to release TWD
i guess i'm still on stage one
One of the lead developers of TWD literally came out and said they were sorry the game wasn't going to be finished.
Quantic dream is about half the size of TellTale Games at its biggest. It's crazy that they hired so many.
It seems like they exploded after TWD Season 1 and decided to expand and take on so many projects but nothing ever gave them TWD numbers again, not even Season 2. If they had stayed the same size they would still be alive now. Too much ambition and too naive to think that 1 huge success means they can turn everything into sales gold.
Hearing that basically everything after TWD Season 1 was a failure makes me wonder.... why did they keep going for so long? Somebody has to notice it isn't working and make the call for some change.
The entire last episode is completely different depending on choices you made
Story spoilers
john doe either becomes the joker and your enemy, or he tries to team up with you as a jokerfied version of batman
MS support already mentioned that it's waiting on official telltale response on the matter which is the future statement in the next few weeks
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWalkingDeadGame/comments/9i7m5r/regarding_refunds_on_xbox/
i would assume nintendo/sony are following the same protocol
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWalkingDeadGame/comments/9i7m5r/regarding_refunds_on_xbox/
i would assume nintendo/sony are following the same protocol
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Colorado is still way cheaper than california and it'll be a long time until it catches up.
Dire Wolf Digital, and some fairly big video game QA contracting companies. There's also definitely a strong indie dev community with some good organization, but Friday the 13th is the only indie game I know of from here that hit the mainstream.
I don't know the stats, but I get the feeling Colorado and Texas are good tech hubs, but not good art and design hubs, and video games kinda need both.
I think in a world of self publishing and digital sales some studios have more of a lifeline than others as they'll have a baseline of month to month revenue they earn from the existing portfolio of content.
It may very well be the case that ongoing sales can easily support Telltale in a 25 person configuration, perhaps even very profitably. Survival is certainly a possibility, and buys more time to try and line up external funding or new deals.
Bouncing back from that is a lot harder though. Once you release a lot of your core talent, it is hard to either bring them back or rebuild a new team as uncertainty and the sting of the current situation will linger. Smaller development resources mean your ability to build new revenues streams is way down. And eventually the existing portfolio of content will start to wither and sales will fall further, especially as new platforms start to arrive.
I can easily believe that as a company Telltale can survive this. Where they go from there is super hard to know though.
That's... huh.
I heard the Batman games did some interesting things, so that's kinda neat; I usually don't like knowing spoilers but that sorta sold me. Maybe I will play those some day. Maybe.
They dug their own grave when they conditioned their users to wait for all episodes to be out/ be on sale instead of ever paying full price.
And people figured out one of their games' main selling points "your choices matter" actually didn't, "X will remember that" was mostly visual feedback that never led to anything.
That said Tales from the Borderlands is really fun and should be played by every fan of games like these.
And people figured out one of their games' main selling points "your choices matter" actually didn't, "X will remember that" was mostly visual feedback that never led to anything.
That said Tales from the Borderlands is really fun and should be played by every fan of games like these.
What do you mean? Theres a pretty big game development scene in Texas and has been for decades.
PikPok developers post here? Used to play Into The Dead 2 a lot.
It just sucks what happened with Telltale Games, since I loved TWD Season 1 so much. Lee was one of my favorite protagonists ever in a game.
Batman Enemy Within was an anomaly when compared to the last 3-4 years of Telltale games. I rarely have seen a game, nor less a Telltale game, where your choices actually mattered. The game convinced me that Telltale still had it and they were trying to do better.
What I don't understand is why make a final season of twd if you know you are going bankrupt .did they expect that the preorders would save the company ? I remember until few weeks ago they advertising the final season preorder promo
I'm confused: With the Netflix thing, are they bringing both seasons of Minecraft: Story Mode over or just Season One?
How??? How much money were they putting into these games????
Probably, yes. That and I would imagine they were scrambling other ways to try to get money behind the scenes, too.
Personally, I'm overjoyed we at least got some of TWD4. The first episode was truly magical, it was a return to form for the series, and if episode 2 is even better, then at least the series will end (be it abruptly) on a really high note.
It would have sucked even more if we had never got these two episodes, and instead had to deal with New Frontier being the ending to the series. Especially given New Frontier literally ended with what was basically a "Look forward to season 4!" card.
How does a company with moderately successful projects go belly up, but another company that makes a game once every 5 years or so still stay afloat (remedy games - last known game was Alan Wake)? I will never understand this.
All of Remedy's game dev costs were carried by Microsoft - Alan Wake, Quantum Break so they just needed to deliver. Sure, they probably didn't make any real extra profit on any of those games since they didn't sell great, but they didn't have to worry about them not selling well either whereas Telltale Games had to worry about costs and licensing and making money since they didn't have anyone paying them for delivery.
Its unfair to bring it up now too but while I'd say 80% of Telltale's problems are due to simple financial mismanagement, namely games costing way too much relative to how much expected sales could be, I also wonder if they poorly forecasted how many people want their kind of games. Its easy to say you are making a niche game that will be very good, but its much harder to be honest with yourself and think about how many people will actually buy it.
I love the Yakuza games for example but Yakuza 2 didn't even chart in the Sept NPDs, but it feels like Sega has properly budgeted for the series and knows how many copies will sell. Its not going to sell like Spider-Man or God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2. I never really got the feeling that Telltale Games really knew its audience, especially as it veered wildly in its property choices.
Its unfair to bring it up now too but while I'd say 80% of Telltale's problems are due to simple financial mismanagement, namely games costing way too much relative to how much expected sales could be, I also wonder if they poorly forecasted how many people want their kind of games. Its easy to say you are making a niche game that will be very good, but its much harder to be honest with yourself and think about how many people will actually buy it.
I love the Yakuza games for example but Yakuza 2 didn't even chart in the Sept NPDs, but it feels like Sega has properly budgeted for the series and knows how many copies will sell. Its not going to sell like Spider-Man or God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2. I never really got the feeling that Telltale Games really knew its audience, especially as it veered wildly in its property choices.
I dont think I ever bought a season of a telltale game for full price so I guess that makes me part of the problem. They always seem to put the season pass on sale for like 50% around the release of episode 3 and if not then they always ended up in the end of the year flash sales on psn. Shame they cant finish off the walking dead. The bigger shame is that management didnt figure out a way to stop this from happening.
Wait, Minecraft season 1 is 8 episodes, but the Netflix deal is 5 episodes, ???
Why hire people when you know you'll be laying them off in two weeks?
People buying the games at a discount was not the problem
While I don't know the specifics of how they stay afloat, a quick Google shows they have under half the number of employees and are located in a much cheaper city which probably makes a big difference.
Episodes 6, 7, and 8 were bonus episodes provided by an "Adventure Pass" DLC. The series was originally going to be 5 episodes, as per Telltale standard. They probably added an extra 3 given that it was the first successful (monetarily) project they had since TWD1...
Let me say too, those episodes are fantastic. Most people laugh off Minecraft: Story Mode since... well you know. But a lot of it was really good. Episodes 1-4 are one arc, and 5-8 are another arc entirely, it's practically two seasons in one. 1-4 are not extravagant by any means, but 5-8 are really fun episodes with fun little stories to them, I enjoyed them very much.
I don't regret the $20 I spent on The Final Season at all, even if it only got me two episodes.
This is a major anomaly in terms of season passes anyway.
I hate Minecraft and yet Mincecraft Story Mode was amazing, probably better made and thought out than TWD games.
Yes, but there's so many other reasons to not buy season passes as exemplified by other games this gen.
This is just another reminder that you shouldn't buy season passes before the content has been released.