Skip to main content

Telltale Games is coming back under new ownership

Telltale Games is coming back under new ownership

/

‘We’ve got some exciting things to share soon’

Share this story

The Walking Dead Clementine screencap

Telltale Games is getting a second life. After a tragic and well-publicized decline, the game studio — best known for adaptations of series like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones — is coming back after a group of investors purchased the company’s assets with plans to relaunch. The new Telltale Games will be helmed by Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, two industry veterans with experience primarily in mobile gaming and the technology side. “We believe there is still so much life to the brand and its franchises, and we look forward to building upon the company’s storytelling legacy,” Ottilie said in a statement.

The new studio will operate out of Malibu, and the new ownership group says that it will be “re-releasing select games from the studio’s back catalog and developing new games in some of the company’s best-selling brands.” As part of that, the new Telltale says that it has hired or contracted “key talent” from the previous iteration of the studio. No specific employees were named.

Details about new games and rereleases are expected “in the coming weeks,” according to the company. “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.”

Telltale first launched in 2004, but it wasn’t until the release of the debut season of The Walking Dead in 2012 that the studio received widespread acclaim for its unique style of interactive storytelling. It would go on to adapt some of the biggest pop culture properties, including Game of Thrones, Batman, Minecraft, and Guardians of the Galaxy. However, last year, after The Verge reported on rampant mismanagement and a toxic culture at the studio, things for Telltale steadily went downhill. There were mass layoffs, games were pulled from sale, and ultimately, the studio shut down.

“We’ve got some exciting things to share soon,” Waddle says of the new Telltale. “We’ll try not to keep them waiting too long, but we think fans will be pleased.”