Telltale, renowned manufacturer of story-based video games, provides most of its staff

Players may have gotten tired with the Telltale games, however, as they became familiar with what was once an innovative formula, Skolnick said. Although the games have suggested that players can influence the current story, like a book "Choose your own adventure" in digital form, the different ways have finally converged.

The success of The Walking Dead, which has been named Game of the Year by publications such as USA Today and Wired, has led Telltale to double the size of its offices and increase its workforce to 400 employees. He began producing episodic content based on intellectual properties such as "Guardians of the Galaxy" and Minecraft.

But after a rapid growth, a collapse took place. The studio fired 90 employees in November and the company's tough working conditions were detailed in a March article from The Verge. In June, Telltale's former director, Kevin Bruner, sued the company he helped found.

"We had demanding projects and demanding deadlines, and it's kind of an industry standard," said Mary Kenney, a Telltale editor who was fired on Friday.

Telltale said it had retained 25 employees "to fulfill the company's obligations to its board of directors and partners". The studio was working on an interactive series for Netflix involving Minecraft. A report based on Netflix "Stranger Things" was canceled, according to media reports.

Despite this, the studio's influence on video game stories will continue.

A planned sequel to Life Is Strange, an episodic Dontnod Entertainment game that favors conversations, is expected to come out this week. And in Firewatch, the first game of Campo Santo, a studio founded by former Telltale authors, the two main characters establish a powerful relationship while communicating with walkie-talkies.

Despite the layoffs in Telltale, the second episode of the fourth and final season of The Walking Dead will be released on Tuesday. The company did not announce the publication of the last two episodes, but Ms. Kenney, the lead author of the second episode, said that all the writers and designers of the project had been fired.

"It's always shocking and shocking" to leave the game after working for a year, said Kenney. She added, "Not being able to celebrate this final launch party is pretty scary."