There have been significant layoffs across the video game industry this year, and local companies have not been excepted. Malibu-based Telltale Games recently confirmed that it had laid off a “significant” number of employees in early September, and Santa Monica-based Naughty Dog LLC reportedly cut about 25 team members around the same time. Earlier, employees at Marina del Rey-based virtual reality gaming studio Survios Inc. reported that about 35 employees had been laid off in February.
Naughty Dog has developed some of the best-selling gaming franchises of all time, including “Uncharted” and “The Last of Us.” Prior to the reported layoffs, it announced in July that its co-president, Evan Wells, would retire at the end of the year. The staff cuts were focused on employees in quality-assurance testing and did not apparently include full-time staff, according to a report from gaming news site Kotaku. Naughty Dog previously had about 400 employees.
Regarding Telltale, a spokesperson said the number of employees let go was “in the single digits” and spread across the entire organization. Severance packages were given to all the team members that were let go. The company said that while layoffs were significant, “words like ‘most’ or ‘majority’ overstate it.” Telltale told the Business Journal in August that it had 25 employees, meaning that cutting just five employees would be 20% of its workforce.
Telltale was originally founded in 2004 as Telltale Inc. and quickly made a name for itself with interactive, episodic games based on intellectual property such as “The Walking Dead” and “Games of Thrones.” However, the company wound up filing for assignment– a legal process that allows a failed company to sell off its assets in lieu of filing for bankruptcy –in 2018. Telltale was acquired in 2019 by its now-chief executive, Jamie Ottilie, who quickly got to work on rebuilding it.
Telltale released its first game – “The Expanse: A Telltale Series” – under this new ownership in July. New episodic chapters of the game were rolled out over subsequent weeks, and the company said that the sixth chapter is “coming soon.”
Telltale said in August that production of a sequel to its previous “The Wolf Among Us” game was ongoing, though it had previously delayed the game’s release. A Telltale spokesperson said that “The Wolf Among Us 2” is still in development.
“We aren’t ready to talk further on projects in development, other than to say that they are ongoing, and the new Telltale has established a precedent for partnership and collaboration,” the source said.
