Has Telltale Games Been Revived?
The answer to the question in the headline is “it depends on your definition of ‘revived’.” A company called LCG Entertainment has purchased the name and brand of Telltale, and is looking into buying back many of the former outlet’s output. So something that calls itself Telltale Games will exist, just like something that calls itself Atari exists in France. But it will never be the same company again — those guys are gone.
The question is, will any of the writers, artists and programmers who worked at the former Telltale Games be rehired for this “new” version? That’s what would make it as close to the original as you could get. According to Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, who are heading the new venture, some former employees WILL be offered work — but under freelance contract, not as official hires. Many of them feel outright insulted by this and probably won’t take the offer, even though Ottille and Waddle gave the vague promise that the freelance work could turn into full-time eventually.
As it stands, this is a small venture that can’t really support much yet. “We’re going to stay small over the next six months and we will work for more of a distributed development pipeline than Telltale was known for,” Ottilie told Polygon. “We’ll focus on tools, technology and design in-house. Some things like animation and motion capture will be done with the right partnerships externally.”
Former Telltale employee Caroline Liddick said on Twitter, “Telltale Games isn’t coming back… A company bought our assets. I am still working through the trauma of our company closing, and I am missing my friends every day. My entire life was turned upside down. Feel free to quote me, I don’t care.” Okay, done.
The good side is that the games Telltale already made, many of which have been yanked from Steam and other digital sellers, should be coming back soon. So if the “new” Telltale never truly reaches its glory days, at least we’ll still have the classics.