The video game maker 'Walking Dead' Telltale Games fires most employees

Telltale Games, based in San Rafael, announced via Twitter Friday that it had dismissed the majority of its employees "after a year marked by insurmountable challenges."

The tweet indicated that only 25 employees "remained to fulfill the company's obligations to their board and their partners".

Gamasutra, a technology publication, reported Friday that about 225 employees of Telltale have been fired. The Verge, another technology publication, reported that several sources said that Telltale's employees had been fired without compensation and that they had about 30 minutes to leave the building.

"This has been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale because we have been working to put the company on a new path," said Telltale CEO Pete Hawley on Friday. "Unfortunately, we ran out of time trying to make it happen."

Founded in 2004 by three former LucasArts employees, Kevin Bruner, Troy Molander and Dan Connors – Telltale have experienced a quantum leap. In 2012, it had 125 employees after doubling in size in the previous two years. That year, he moved, renting 22,000 square feet of office space at the Marin Executive Center, at 4000 Civic Center Drive in San Rafael, a space once occupied by the San Rafael-based developer of design software, Autodesk.

On Friday, rows of desks and computers in the offices of Telltale Games were abandoned. Only a few employees stayed inside their computers or laptops.

Two men who described themselves as former employees of Telltale Games spoke casually about leaving the office. They said that they were heading to a bar. They refused a request for maintenance.

Another employee sitting in one of the offices sent the independent newspaper back to the company's statement and politely asked the journalist to leave.

Telltale has produced adventure video games derived from licensed properties of movies, comics, television and other video games. The comic book based on "The Walking Dead" aimed to reproduce a cinematic experience while offering players choices that would ultimately alter the course of history. . Other popular Telltale games include Game of Thrones, The Wolf Among Us and Batman.

In June 2018, Telltale announced its partnership with Netflix to provide access to its games via the Netflix streaming service. Telltale also said he was working on a new game based on Netflix's original property, "Stranger Things."

In his tweet, Hawley wrote, "We have published some of our best content this year and we have received a lot of positive feedback, but ultimately it has not translated into sales."

The first sign of a real problem on the horizon came in 2017, when the then CEO, Bruner, was ousted. Connors, co-founder, briefly took over management, but in September 2017, Hawley, a former executive of the Zynga gaming company, was hired as the new CEO of Telltale.

In a statement on September 14, 2017, Connors said, "We created Telltale because we saw a huge opportunity to bring world-class stories and video games together. It exceeded our expectations, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. "

In November 2017, however, Telltale announced the dismissal of 90 workers, about a quarter of its workforce at that time.

In June 2018, Bruner, who started as a technical director of the company, sued Telltale for his deportation, alleging breach of contract and making other allegations.

Telltale's lawyers responded that Bruner's case was unfounded and stated in a legal document: "The company is now trying to reverse the decline it has under the direction of the plaintiffs.

Bruner's performance as CEO of Telltale has been misjudged in the gaming industry's press. In an article in The Verge, Telltale insiders claimed that Bruner was promoting a toxic and chaotic work culture. Another article in USgamer cited complaints that the company was driving staff to produce new titles or make abrupt project reviews at the expense of technical quality.

Bruner has disputed the criticism, stating in The Verge's article that game development is a complex, fast and demanding process.

Responding to news of Telltale's disappearance, Robert Eyler, chief economist at the Marin Economic Forum and a professor at Sonoma University, said: "That probably means very little for the local economy. You talk about a relatively small number of people. Most of these people are likely to find employment in the greater Bay Area because of the shortage of labor. "

Eyler said the biggest question is what Telltale's failure indicates if Marin is fertile ground for video game companies to thrive and thrive.