Wolf Among Us dev calls on industry to "UNIONIZE" amid fresh Telltale layoffs

rockpapershotgun.com:

Four years after all but shutting up shop in 2018, Telltale Games are once again laying off staff. The company let "most" of its employees go in September, according to former staffer and cinematic artist Jonah Huang, who began posting about the situation on Xitter earlier in the week. Telltale have now confirmed aspects of Huang's story, while declining to specify how many jobs have been chopped.

"Due to current market conditions, we regrettably had to let some of our Telltale team go recently," the studio wrote in a statement. "We did not take this action lightly, and our commitment to storytelling and finding new ways to do so remains the same. We are grateful to everyone for their dedication along this journey, and we are working to support everyone impacted."

It's unclear how the layoffs will affect development of Telltale's on-going Expanse adaptations or The Wolf Among Us 2, which has already been delayed out of 2023 to avoid overworking staff, but the company insisted in their statement that "all projects currently in development are still in production, and we have no further updates at this time."

The Telltale cuts are the latest in a series of brutal mass layoffs at major videogame companies, with Epic recently carving away 830 staff following what their CEO Tim Sweeney described as an "unrealistic" period of over-investment – naturally, he’s not amongst those clearing his desk. Creative Assembly have begun a redundancy process following the cancellation of their shooter Hyenas, while Team 17 are cutting staff for the second time this year. Back in January, Microsoft fired almost 10,000 workers across several studios and departments, blaming the state of the global economy and shifting consumer spending