Developer Telltale Games, which famously shut its doors last year despite having produced several of gaming's best stories during its history, will be coming back after its assets were purchased by a company called LCG Entertainment. Telltale Games is the studio behind Telltale's The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, as well as original games like Puzzle Agent - the company's games library is pretty deep, even though by the time of its closing, it had pretty clear established its niche as the premier developer behind point-and-click story games.
At the time of its closing, Telltale Games was working on a Stranger Things game on top of the final season of The Walking Dead, which would wrap up Clementine's journey. Its closure was sudden - first, the developer revealed it would be shutting down, but would maintain a skeleton crew to wrap up the projects it had on the go. Only a month later, however, the studio began its liquidiation phase, which included delisting some Steam games. The studio also faced down a classs-action lawsuit for violating labor laws after 275 employees banded together to assert Telltale had laid them off without notice or severance.
Despite the cloud of negativity that surrounded the studio's last days, it appears that a brighter future might be in store for Telltale after all. According to a report from Polygon, the studio's assets have been purchased by LCG Entertainment, and the company will sell some of Telltale's back catalog while working on new games based on a few of the properties fans already associate with Telltale. The new Telltale will be led by Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, and some workers from the original studio will be offered freelance roles with full-time positions hopefully available in the future once the studio is re-established.
Ottilie is mostly involved with mobile games, while Waddle's previous experience involves running sales and marketing for the Havok game engine. According to the new owners, Telltale will already have rights to The Wolf Among Us and Batman to begin with - but The Walking Dead won't be coming back, since that license is now owned by Skybound. Likewise, Stranger Things has had its rights reverted back to Netflix, so it seems the dream pairing of Telltale and Hawkins may never come to fruition.
Still, it's exciting news for fans of Telltale, a studio that was operating in a space that other developers weren't really working within - and even now, months after its closure, no one has really moved in to occupy the same niche. Whether that niche remains a viable and profitable endeavor for new owners LCG Entertainment, however, remains to be seen. With less licenses and a need to revisit the episodic model, there are a number of challenges facing Telltale Games - but at least now the studio has the option to face them head-on and see if it can rebuild a legacy that many fans would love to see end on a positive note far in the future.
Source: Polygon