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Telltale Games
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Telltale Incorporated (trade name: Telltale Games) was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California. The company was founded in July 2004 by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, following LucasArts' decision to leave the adventure game genre. Telltale established itself to focus on adventure games using a novel episodic release schedule over digital distribution, creating its own game engine, the Telltale Tool, to support this. It closed in October 2018 after filing for bankruptcy protection.

Key Information

Telltale's initial successes were with games using intellectual properties with small but dedicated fan bases including Sam & Max, Wallace & Gromit, Homestar Runner, and Bone. Around 2010, the studio gained more lucrative licensing opportunities in more mainstream properties such as Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and Law & Order. Telltale's critical breakout game came in 2012's The Walking Dead, based on the comic book series of the same name. It introduced a more narrative-directed approach that diverged from the standard adventure game "point and click" gameplay. The Walking Dead gave players the ability to make choices that could affect how future events in the game or its sequels played out, effectively allowing players to craft their own personalized take on the offered story. Nearly all of Telltale's adventure games afterwards featured this player choice-driven approach. The Walking Dead was critically acclaimed and considered to have revitalized the adventure game genre since LucasArts' departure from it in 2004.

Telltale continued to expand with new licensing deals for episodic adventure games over the next few years, including for Minecraft, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Batman. However the rate of production created a "crunch time" culture behind the scenes, leaving poor company morale, little room for creativity to veer from the formula set by The Walking Dead or improvements on the Telltale Tool. A management shakeup occurred in early 2017, with CEO Bruner stepping down, and Pete Hawley, formerly of Zynga, brought in to fix Telltale's problems. Internal restructuring led to a layoff of 25% of the company's staff in November 2017, along with an emphasis to slow down game production to improve production quality, retire the Telltale Tool for a more standard game engine, and seek other lucrative properties to develop for. This resulted in an early 2018 deal with Netflix in which Telltale would adapt its Minecraft: Story Mode into an interactive program for the streaming service, and Netflix licensing the rights to Telltale for an adventure game based on its show Stranger Things.

In the midst of releasing The Walking Dead: The Final Season, the company was forced to initiate a "majority studio closure" after their last investor had pulled out of funding. Telltale announced on September 21, 2018, that it had let go of all but 25 of its staff as part of this closure, with the remaining skeleton crew completing specific obligations, such as finishing the Minecraft: Story Mode project porting to Netflix. Telltale Games filed for assignment in October 2018. Many assets were later acquired by LCG Entertainment, which revived the Telltale Games name as part of its business in August 2019, retaining many of the company's previous licenses and offering former staff freelance positions.

History

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Foundation and initial growth (2004–2010)

[edit]

Telltale Games was founded in San Rafael, California, by Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, a group of former LucasArts employees who worked on the studio's adventure games. In March 2004, LucasArts recognized that there were "current market place realities and underlying economic considerations" that made adventure games too risky to release, and canceled work on two sequels of previous adventure games, Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max: Freelance Police, as well as laying off many of those developers.[1] Bruner, Connors and Molander were not among the layoffs, but felt that the change of direction at LucasArts was not favorable, and departed the company later that year to found Telltale Games July 2004.[1][2] The studio opening was announced on October 4.[3][4] The name "Telltale" was selected by Bruner as the three envisioned themselves creating more adventure games but de-emphasizing puzzle elements in favor of narrative aspects, telling a tale to the user.[2] Technology attorney Ira P. Rothken negotiated publishing and licensing deals for the company.[5]

The team of Telltale Games at San Diego Comic-con in July 2007; from left to right: Chuck Jordan, Jake Rodkin, Dave Grossman, Daniel Farjam Herrera, Doug Tabacco, Emily Morganti, and also a demo version of Sam & Max Save the World

The company's initial goal was to develop a new Sam & Max game in an episodic format. Grossman said that Telltale identified that Sam & Max had a small but dedicated audience allowing them to develop a title that would be successful in reaching out to this group and not requiring them to seek out a bigger license that would have incurred more development costs.[6] Developing a Sam & Max game required both development of tools to produce the game, and the license to make it. At the time of the studio's founding, the license for Sam & Max was still held by LucasArts, who refused to negotiate a deal nor license the work on Sam & Max: Freelance Police for Telltale to complete it. Telltale waited out the licensing period until around mid-2005, after which Steve Purcell, Sam & Max's creator, immediately offered the license to Telltale.[1]

Until they could get to that point, the studio developed other games to bring in revenue and keep the studio afloat. On February 11, 2005, the company released their first game, Telltale Texas Hold'em, a poker card game simulator which was intended primarily to test the Telltale Tool, their in-house game engine.[1] They used the license around Jeff Smith's Bone comic book series to test the episodic format. Though initially planned for a five-episode series, Telltale only released two episodes in 2005 and 2006 and the remaining episode had been canceled.[1] Alongside Bone, Telltale developed a series of games for Ubisoft around the CSI television series, including CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, CSI: Hard Evidence, CSI: Deadly Intent, and CSI: Fatal Conspiracy; though these games were also developed as episodes, they were each released in single packages.[1] Outside of Ubisoft, few other publishers were interested in distributing Telltale's early games, forcing them to turn to their own distribution system.[2]

Once they had secured the rights to Sam & Max, Telltale set about to making this game with an episodic approach, with episodes planned to be released on a tight monthly basis through their partner, GameTap. Sam & Max: Season One was considered a success for the company, and considered one of the first successful demonstration of an episodic release in video games.[1] The success led to additional funding through two rounds of angel investment, including Matthew Le Merle and members of angel group Keiretsu Forum.[7] The studio created a second season for Sam & Max, and found additional niche intellectual property areas, including Wallace & Gromit and Homestar Runner, to continue the episodic adventure game format.[1] When Darrell Rodriguez became CEO of LucasArts in 2008, he wanted to see the old LucasArts adventure properties flourish, leading to a license for Telltale to create a new game in the Monkey Island series, Tales of Monkey Island.[1] Telltale was also able to expand their release platforms beyond personal computers, with releases of these games on various consoles at the time.[1]

To supplement their normal episodic games, Telltale created a pilot program in early 2010 to explore one-off games that would explore other gameplay and storytelling approaches that could eventually be incorporated into their episodic games.[8] The first game, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent, a puzzle-solving game in collaboration with Graham Annable, was released in June 2010, while Poker Night at the Inventory, a crossover poker game featuring characters from Sam and Max, Homestar Runner, Valve's Team Fortress 2, and the webcomic Penny Arcade, was released late in 2010. Telltale followed up Puzzle Agent with a sequel, Puzzle Agent 2, in 2011. In 2013, Telltale continued the series with Poker Night 2. The Walking Dead started out as a pilot program game that was known internally as the "zombie prototype".[9] In general, few of these games brought in large revenues, and until 2010, the founders feared that investors would suddenly pull out of the company and would force its closure.[2]

Major franchise acquisitions (2010–2016)

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Having established themselves as working with comedy franchises, Telltale chose to work with dramatic franchises as well as comedy series. In June 2010, Telltale announced that they had secured licenses with NBC Universal to develop two episodic series based on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park.[10] Notably, Telltale's Jurassic Park: The Game was the first game to break away from the standard adventure game format, including elements like quick time events and time-limited choices which would become a core gameplay element in their future adventure games.[1] Telltale obtained the license from NBC Universal to develop episodic series around the Law & Order franchise in April 2011.[11]

By 2010, Telltale had proven itself successful, with yearly revenues of $10 million, 90% greater than the previous year.[12] Part of this was attributed to Back to the Future: The Game, which Steve Allison, the senior vice-president (VP) of marketing, called in 2011 their "most successful franchise to date".[13] Allison stated that for most of their games, they only need to sell 100,000 copies to break even, but many of their recent releases have seen twice that number or more.[12] The studio expanded from 90 to 140 employees.[12] They had obtained a license in 2011 to develop a King's Quest adventure game based on the original Sierra games,[14] but Activision took back the rights in 2013, which were subsequently used by The Odd Gentlemen to create their 2015 episodic King's Quest game.[15]

Telltale's breakthrough success came with the licenses of the comic book series The Walking Dead and Fables in association with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in 2011.[12] Allison anticipated that The Walking Dead series could be a $20 to $30 million franchise.[12] Their The Walking Dead video game presented an alteration of Telltale's approach, as rather than a traditional adventure game where players would need to solve puzzles, The Walking Dead was more focused on providing a cinematic experience but presenting choices to the player, either through dialog trees or through quick time events, that would create "determinants" that would feed into latter parts of the episode and into future episodes; one example would be deciding which of one of two characters to save from a zombie attack at the spur of the moment. While these decisions do not have a direct impact on the game's overall narrative and structure, it provides a more personalized story around what decisions the player had made.[16] This format proved highly successful: the game sold one million copies in 20 days,[17][18] exceeded 8.5 million episode purchases by 2013,[19] and an estimated $40 million in revenue.[20] The success led to two additional 5-episode seasons, a 3-episode mini-season and a final 4-episode season. The Walking Dead is considered to have revitalized the waning adventure game genre due to this more emotionally driven focus. Since The Walking Dead, nearly all of Telltale's games have used a similar approach of being built around the impacts of the player's choices as determinants in later episodes and seasons.

Telltale has had several other licensing details from popular works, including Tales from the Borderlands based on the Borderlands series by Gearbox Software,[21] and Game of Thrones, based on the HBO television show adaption,[21] Minecraft: Story Mode based on the Mojang game, Minecraft,[22] Batman from DC Comics, and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series from Marvel Comics.[23] On retrospective after the studio's closure, former employees of Telltale believed that the studio's expansion into all these additional licensed properties were trying to replicate the success of The Walking Dead, moving the company from a risk-taker to seeking risk aversion strategies.[2] This was also propagated by the weight of the licensed properties: they had taken more conservative approaches to deliver a game that mirrored The Walking Dead, a well-known product, rather than take risks and potentially lose the license.[2]

Telltale relocated to a larger space and expanded from 125 to 160 in mid-2013.[24] Around 2015, the company had grown to 200 to 250 employees.[25] The company continued to grow, at its peak having about 400 employees in mid-2017.[20][2] In the midst of this growth, in 2014–2015, the management of Telltale recognized the need to restructure to handle more projects and more staff.[25] This led to original chief executive officer (CEO) Dan Connors resigning and being replaced by co-founder Kevin Bruner, who was also the firm's president. Connors noted that with the studio's continued growth, it had begun experiencing growth-specific challenges. Connors stated that Bruner's ascension to CEO would best enable Telltale Games to act on future expansion opportunities. Connors remained on the board of directors, and also served as a creative consultant.[26] Internally, there were concerns about this transition and Brunner's influence on it; an anonymous quality control (QC) employee writing in Gamasutra after the firm's closure called this transition "the beginning of the end" for Telltale.[25]

With Bruner's placement as CEO in January 2015, Telltale said it was developing a game based on its own intellectual property as a result of this leadership change.[27] In February 2015, Lionsgate announced an investment within Telltale Games to produce a number of "Super Shows", a hybrid interactive work combining television and video game elements, which would be distributed through non-traditional channels such as through streaming services. The first Super Show planned was an original intellectual property (IP) developed by Telltale that would be able to take advantage of this format.[28] Telltale also announced that Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer and Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello joined Telltale's board of directors.[29] Alongside this, Lionsgate had invested US$40 million into Telltale.[30] The "Super Show" concept never got out of pre-production, due to issues that arose with the studio in 2016 and 2017, according to Variety.[31]

Restructuring (2017–2018)

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External videos
video icon NoClip documentary "Telltale: The Human Stories Behind the Games"

By 2016, Bruner said that the Telltale studio had established an environment to be able to work on four major titles simultaneously with room for various side projects.[1] However, this approach to development had created a perpetual state of "crunch time" within Telltale, according to several current and former staff speaking to USgamer, The Verge, and Variety in 2017. This limited the amount of time that the creators and developers could spend on content in order to maintain a consistent flow of episodes to consumers but impacted the quality of games.[20][32] There was a perpetual drive to release new episodes on a regular basis, whether they were good or not, so that the company had a continued source of income.[2] This particularly affected the Telltale Tool, the game engine used since the company's inception, which caused numerous bugs in released episodes that Telltale became infamously noted for.[20] The anonymous QC tester stated that their department was nearly always under crunch time, working from 48 to 60 hours a week on testing at least two-game series across multiple platforms simultaneously, and were understaffed, leading to some of the quality control issues as well.[25] During this time, the eighth generation of video game consoles emerged, and while the Telltale Tool was ported to these platforms, it showed its age in graphics quality, which also diminished Telltale's products.[2] There was also a new trend of major AAA titles focusing more on emotional story-telling, such as God of War, which Telltale would not easily be able to compete with.[2]

The company was also hobbled by working with established IP, and inconsistencies in the reviewing process with management that led to last-minute reworking of some episodes.[20] The Verge also found some of the employees they spoke to had stated that top-level executives, including Bruner, had become fixated on the format that The Walking Dead presented, making decisions that prevented developers from looking at alternative formats or variations from this formula, stifling creativity and leading to several staff departures prior to the 2017 layoffs.[32][31] According to narrative designer Emily Grace Buck, management would frequently demand rewrites of materials, with most games having between 60 and 90 percent of the content reworked after executive review. Bruner and management created a "culture of fear" of demotion or firing among developers.[2] Some of these rewrites had come days prior to an episode's submission date for certification, creating hasty rewrites that filtered through the entire production process. This rush created some of the apparent "bugs" in the Telltale Tool which Buck stated were more often a result of the inability to smooth out hastily reworked animations as well as perpetuating the crunch time culture within the company.[33][2] Other cases of narrative rewrites were a result of different expectations by some of the executive management. Buck stated that they had originally been driven by management to make Minecraft: Story Mode as a more mature game, but eventually reworked this to a family-friendly title, while for their Guardians of the Galaxy game, the storywriters had written a story they felt more true to the humor and wit of the source material, but were told by management to make a darker story.[33][2] Further, anonymous sources from Telltale stated that very few of the games were profitable, with only The Walking Dead: The First Season, Minecraft: Story Mode, and revenues from publishing 7 Days to Die turning a profit. Batman: The Telltale Series, released in 2016 was said to be one of the worst commercial failures for the company.[1]

On March 15, 2017, Bruner announced he had stepped down as CEO of Telltale,[34] though Variety reported that he had been voted out of this position by the board of directors.[31] Bruner turned the day-to-day operations to Connors, while still remaining on the board of directors. Bruner said "The time has come to pass the reins to someone that can better drive Telltale to the next level and realize all the potential that is here."[34] Pete Hawley, the former VP for Games at Zynga, was announced as the new CEO, with Connors remaining on its Board and acting in an advisory role.[35] Rather than other corporate "fixers" who take control of a company for a temporary period to help it regain its financial footing, Hawley had committed to staying with Telltale after helping the company to get past these problems.[31]

In November 2017, a restructuring of the company cut about 90 positions, about a quarter of their staff, which was not expected to affect the release of any existing projects. Hawley said that the restructuring was for "reorienting our organization with a focus on delivering fewer, better games with a smaller team".[36][37] While Telltale had not stated which positions were let go in the restructuring, sources speaking to USgamer stated that most were part of the management structure that led to these problems; coupled with Hawley's appointment as CEO, this was expected to be a turning point to help revitalize Telltale.[20][31]

In June 2018, Bruner filed a lawsuit against Telltale in relation to his departure, citing financial damages as he had been seemingly removed from the Board of Directors, and thus could not gain information related to Telltale's financial status in anticipation of selling off a portion of his shares in the company. Telltale stated the claims were "meritless".[38] In its response to Bruner's lawsuit, Telltale stated that the company "is now working to turn around the decline that it experienced under [Bruner]'s stewardship".[38] Kent Mudle, the creative director for The Walking Dead: The Final Season, stated that the new management had shown a great deal of effort to turn the studio around from the previous uses, with the executives staying more hands-off and reducing the amount of micromanagement of the creative teams.[39]

In June 2018, Telltale announced a partnership with Netflix for the streaming service to provide its games to subscribers, with the first planned game being Minecraft: Story Mode. Alongside this, Telltale announced that they were working on a yet-untitled game based on Netflix's original property, Stranger Things.[40] According to Variety, there had been suggestions of teaming with Netflix for collaboration shortly after Stranger Things first aired in mid-2016, but Telltale's management at the time, including Bruner, rejected the idea. The Netflix partnership solidified after Hawley took over as CEO.[31] The Stranger Things game would have been used to bridge the show's story between its second and third season. In addition to this game, Telltale had started working with Night School Studio in 2017 for them to make a first-person, narrative driven game that would have led into Telltale's game. However, Night School reported difficulty in cooperating with Telltale over 2018 and were also surprised by the studio's sudden closure.[41]

Majority studio closure and aftermath (2018)

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On September 21, 2018, CEO Pete Hawley announced that Telltale was undergoing a "majority studio closure", with around 90% of its present workforce (225 to 250 employees) let go that day.[42][43] A core team of about 25 employees remained to "fulfill the company's obligations to its board and partners", which includes completing the Minecraft: Story Mode interactive media project for Netflix.[44][45] According to Dan Connors, the studio had been ready to close another round of financing when their last major investor pulled out. The company executives had to make the decision to end all production as soon as possible without this investment. While Connors did not specify which investor pulled out, Variety suggested that this may have been Lionsgate, which had contacted Telltale's board the previous week about its intent to pull out of funding Telltale in order to return to its core film business.[30] Variety also reported that AMC Networks, which owns the rights to The Walking Dead television series, and Smilegate, a Korean mobile games publisher, were looking to invest in Telltale, but both pulled out the day before Telltale's closure announcement.[46] Dan Murray, president of Skybound Interactive which was working with Telltale for The Walking Dead games, said "We knew some of the challenges Telltale was facing, but when the news hits so suddenly everyone was taken off guard",[47] while anonymous Telltale employees stated to The Verge that they had known the company was in financial trouble in the months leading up to the closure and was further hurt by leaks of news related to the Netflix deal, which management wanted to use as a lure for speculative investors.[48]

In a press release, Hawley stated:

It's been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale as we worked to set the company on a new course. Unfortunately, we ran out of time trying to get there. We released some of our best content this year and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, but ultimately, that did not translate to sales. With a heavy heart, we watch our friends leave today to spread our brand of storytelling across the games industry.

— Pete Hawley, CEO of Telltale[49]

Those who were let go reported they were given no warning, had to leave the office building within 30 minutes of the company's decision, received no severance, and only had a limited amount of time on their health care benefits.[42] Melissa Hutchison, the voice actor for Clementine in The Walking Dead games, said that the news came in the middle of a recording session which they had to immediately end.[50] On September 24, the former staff were allowed to return to the office within a three-hour timeframe to gather any belongings they did not manage to collect in the 30 minutes following the majority closure decision.[51] The suddenness of the closure, along with the lack of post-layoff support for the employees, led to renewed discussions about the need for video game developers to unionize, with the Game Workers Unite grassroots movement calling the treatment of the Telltale employees "exploitative".[52] On September 24, 2018, a class-action lawsuit was filed by former Telltale employee Vernie Roberts, representing about a total of 275 Telltale employees, alleging that Telltale violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (WARN Act) and the more stringent requirements set by California of requiring at least 60 days notification before issuing mass layoffs.[53]

Telltale did not officially comment on the status of its in-progress games, including The Wolf Among Us: Season Two, Game of Thrones: Season Two, and the untitled Stranger Things project, but laid-off employees alleged that teams working on these games had all been let go.[42][54] On September 24, Netflix announced that it is "in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium." It also confirmed that it plans to go ahead with releasing Minecraft: Story Mode as planned.[55][56] The first three episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode were subsequently released on Netflix on November 27, and the remaining two were released that December.[57]

Telltale released the second of four planned episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season as scheduled on September 25, 2018, and stated that it had been contacted by "multiple potential partners" to help bring the last two episodes of the series to completion in some manner.[58] While some fans of the series were happy about the news, others, including Cory Barlog, suggested that Telltale should prioritize finding ways to pay the let-go developers over finishing the game.[59] Two anonymous sources speaking to Ethan Gach of Kotaku clarified that Telltale was trying to convince potential development partners to hire the staff Telltale had laid off, so that the staff could remotely finish the two remaining episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season.[60] During the 2018 New York Comic Con, Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead comic, stated that his production company Skybound Entertainment had completed negotiations with Telltale to finish the last two episodes of The Final Season through their Skybound Games division and with the original development team from Telltale.[61]

On October 4, 2018, narrative designer Rachel Noel stated that her team within the skeleton crew was also laid off, and that there were "not many" people left at the company.[62][63] Telltale saw assignment proceedings begin on October 11, 2018, working through Sherwood Partners to liquidate all remaining assets; the company remains in assignment as of April 2019.[64][2] Various digital storefronts started removing Telltale products from their marketplaces by that November.[65][66] For some of these removed games, after rights were returned, the original company was able to rerelease the titles through a new publisher; for example, Skybound republished all four seasons of The Walking Dead as one collection, The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series, in September 2019,[67] while Gearbox Software rereleased Tales from the Borderlands in February 2021.[68]

Relaunch under LCG Entertainment (2018–present)

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Main article: Telltale Games (2018–present)

Following negotiations with Sherwood Partners starting in February 2019, LCG Entertainment acquired several key Telltale assets and on August 28, 2019, announced that it was re-launching the company by assuming "Telltale Games" as its trade name, operating out of Malibu, California, with a satellite studio in Corte Madera, California. Under the leadership of founders Jamie Ottilie (chief executive officer) and Brian Waddle (chief revenue officer), the new Telltale is set to re-release the old Telltale's back-catalog, as well as work on new games based on Telltale-affiliated properties. While licenses for games and planned games like The Walking Dead and Stranger Things have since reverted to their original owners, the new Telltale retains licenses for The Wolf Among Us and Batman, as well as the intellectual property for Puzzle Agent. The new Telltale was expected to start small for the first six months to regain distribution channels, and the company has offered former staff of the old Telltale freelance roles within the company with the potential for full-time positions at a later point in time. Partners in the new Telltale include publisher Athlon Games, which will handle distribution, and financial contributors Chris Kingsley, Lyle Hall and Tobias Sjögren.[69][70] None of the newly involved parties had previously worked with the old Telltale.[71] The first game under this new company was a re-release of Batman: The Telltale Series, adding in a new noir-style shader among other fixes, which was released in December 2019.[72] The company also announced The Wolf Among Us 2 at The Game Awards 2019. The sequel is being made in partnership with AdHoc Studio, a company composed of former Telltale employees who worked on the first game.[73]

Former employees of the original Telltale were skeptical of LCG's approach to the relaunch of Telltale, considering that offering only freelance work while in San Francisco, which has one of the highest costs-of-living in the country, is risky. Others have urged LCG to pay off its existing Telltale debt to its former employees, while others have called for a boycott of any game from the new Telltale.[74] As of 2022, roughly 50 percent of the company's staff is made up of former Telltale employees.[75]

Development model

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Telltale Games released video games in episodic installments.[76][77][78][79] It is seen by production studios and other content producers to take a more realistic approach to movie tie-in games rather than the difficult "see the movie, play the game" model, and also collaborates with studios and screenwriters to create a strong experience that pays homage to the original film or franchise.[12] In a September 2017 interview, Job Stauffer called Telltale's role as "an interactive TV network and a studio", able to produce content across a wide range of genres on a regular basis.[80] He considered their studio to be something between a video game developer and a cable or streaming network with production capabilities like HBO or Netflix.[80]

In general, Telltale offered its games as a one-time "season pass" purchase for the game's season when the first episode of the season was released, with the user then entitled to all planned episodes for that season. For digital purchases, this entitlement was handled through the digital storefront. In retail, Telltale published complete seasons after the season's digital release was over, but also adopted a model where they could publish, at the same time as the digital release, a retail disc that contains the first episode. The disc included a "season pass" entitlement to the remaining episodes to be digitally downloaded, tied to the disc itself rather than the user. This allowed for trading or resale of the retail product that can be played by others, which according to Stauffer, makes for a "nice in-between" market model that satisfies players, retailers, and themselves.[80] For some of their games, Telltale developed additional downloadable content, such as 400 Days for The Walking Dead, or three additional episodes for Minecraft: Story Mode Season 1, which must be purchased separately from the season pass.

With Batman: The Telltale Series and most of the episodic adventure games released later, Telltale added a "Crowd Play" feature that can be used by those that stream their playthroughs on services like Twitch. Through Crowd Play, viewers can vote for an option for the streamer to select.[81] While mainly a developer, Telltale also verified its self-publishing ethos;[82] the only classic developer-publisher relationship was with Ubisoft for the CSI video game franchise.[83] They have struck financial arrangements with GameTap for the first two seasons of the rebooted Sam & Max games, but their publishing arrangements have been chiefly made after the games were already completed and had already been sold via digital distribution.

Telltale aimed to present itself on as many digital platforms and avenues as possible.[84] It has released games through GameTap; on Microsoft Windows and OS X, through Steam and similar services, plus its own online store, on Wii via WiiWare and disc, on Xbox 360, via Xbox Live Arcade and disc, on PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Network and disc, on iPhone and iPad through iTunes, on PlayStation Vita, and on Kindle Fire HDX.[85] Though Telltale normally port their own games to other systems, CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder was ported to the PlayStation 2 by Ubisoft Sofia,[86] and Bone: Out from Boneville was ported to Mac OS by Vanbrio.[87] Telltale was one of the companies who Sony confirmed pledged PlayStation 4 third-party support at the PlayStation Meeting 2013.[88] Telltale had also committed to developing and re-releasing seasons for the Nintendo Switch. Stauffer stated that there were no restrictions on what games they can bring to the Switch due to content, but they were focusing on their more recent, family-friendly games like Minecraft: Story Mode, Batman, and Guardians of the Galaxy only due to ease of porting these to the Switch, while older games like The Walking Dead required more effort to port.[80]

Telltale Tool

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The Telltale Tool is a proprietary game engine developed by Telltale. Telltale commenced development on the engine shortly after its founding, initially referring to the engine as the "Telltale Engine and Toolset".[89] A casual poker game, Telltale Texas Hold'em, was created to test their engine and distribution model, and to ensure that all major bugs were ironed out before the release of their first adventure game, Bone: Out from Boneville.[90] The Telltale Tool has been used for every game developed by Telltale Games,[91] and continued to receive improvements since the initial version, such as compatibility to new systems and better graphics capabilities.[92] The only third-party game to use the Telltale Tool, Hector: Badge of Carnage, was developed by Straandlooper and also published by Telltale Games.[93]

While the Telltale Tool has been updated over the years to support newer consoles and computers, it lacked features that made it more difficult to develop for as the company took on more projects, rushing the development schedules.[20] Until 2016, Telltale Tool did not have a physics engine, meaning that if a scene required an object to fall, this had to be animated by hand, taking time from other more productive activities.[20] This also prevented them from using elements like dynamic lighting, and required them to develop lighting models using 3D modeling tools like Maya, significantly extending time to develop art assets.[94] The aged feature set of the Telltale Tool led to a perception that many of Telltale's games had an abnormally high rate of bugs and other technical flaws, pervasive enough to pose a significant risk of impeding players' ability to progress through a given game. A 2015 article by Kotaku noted that "their games, wonderful in many ways as they may be, have been accompanied by an undercurrent of fan anger" over widespread bugs and glitches. The article concluded that Telltale's support forums "paint a portrait of a publisher that is constantly releasing buggy and even outright broken games", seemingly lacking the resources to fix or even monitor most of them.[95]

Telltale moved to an improved version of their engine around early 2016, partially implemented first in The Walking Dead: Michonne and completed for the release of Batman: The Telltale Series.[94] The updated Telltale Tool provided direct support for DirectX 11 features, including physics-based models, texture mapping and blending, and dynamic lighting and shadows.[94] The changes also helped automate and integrate a game's development across all departments within Telltale, and specifically helped to reduce memory use in some scenes, which had been identified as causing bugs in some consoles' versions.[94] In mid-June 2018, Variety reported that Telltale was moving away from the Telltale Tool and instead toward the established Unity game engine. The Stranger Things game was expected to be the first to use the Unity-based engine.[31]

Telltale Publishing

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Telltale helped other developers to publish their games. Under the moniker Telltale Publishing, Telltale entered into a publishing deal with Jackbox Games to bring the console versions of The Jackbox Party Pack to retail markets,[96] and with The Fun Pimps to publish 7 Days to Die for consoles; according to Variety, this publishing deal was as financially successful for Telltale as the first The Walking Dead season.[97][31] On August 18, 2016, Telltale published Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n by Night School Studio.[98] During the company's restructuring in 2017, the publishing branch of Telltale had been put on hiatus but was expected to be reused once the company regained its financial stability.[31]

Games

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Main article: List of Telltale Games video games

Legacy

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The release of the first season of The Walking Dead in 2012 is considered to have created a resurgence in the adventure game genre, which had been languishing since about 2000.[99][100] Dontnod Entertainment found the episodic approach to storytelling to be an ideal way to present Life Is Strange, and it has allowed them to release supplementary stories within the series in smaller pieces.[101][102] Telltale's approach to branching stories has often been criticized, with choices ultimately having little effect on a game's overall narration, often being summarized as "choices don't matter"; players may make choices to save a character from death early in a game, but only to have that character die later for the game to have a cohesive plot and making the player's effort to save the character meaningless, for example.[103][104][105]

Former employees of Telltale Games have gone on to adapt the narrative aspects of these games into their own products. Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, co-writers of the first season of The Walking Dead, decided to leave to pursue independent game development, founding Campo Santo in 2013 and releasing Firewatch, a critically praised narrative-driven exploration game. Adam Hines, a writer for Telltale, co-founded Night School Studio in 2014, subsequently releasing Oxenfree which heavily used a "walk and talk" mechanic as part of its gameplay.[102] Four former employees who had left before the studio's closure—Michael Choung (who had briefly spent time at Night School Studio), Dennis Lenart, Nick Herman, and Pierre Shorette—formed AdHoc Studio with the intent to develop live-action interactive video games, following in Telltale's footsteps.[106] AdHoc has since become involved with the new Telltale Games by LCG to help with the narrative and cinematic elements of The Wolf Among Us 2.[107] Telltale co-founder Dan Connors created a new studio in 2019, Skunkape Games, made up of himself and former Telltale employees Jake Rodkin, Randy Tudor, and Jonathan Sgro.[108] Between 2020 and 2024, the studio released remasters of Telltale's Sam & Max games with assistance from other members of the original development team.[109] In 2021, Telltale co-founder Kevin Bruner created a new studio Dramatic Labs with more than twenty former Telltale employees, including former lead writer and creative director Andrew Grant, former lead writer Dan Martin, former creative director Kent Mudle, and former executive producer and creative director Brett Tosti.[110] Dramatic Labs' first game, Star Trek: Resurgence, was released in May 2023.[111]

References

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Telltale Games

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Telltale Games, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher founded in October 2004 in San Rafael, California, by former LucasArts employees, specializing in episodic narrative-driven adventure games that emphasized player choice and branching stories. The studio initially revived classic point-and-click titles like Sam & Max before achieving breakout success with licensed adaptations, most notably The Walking Dead (2012), which won Game of the Year honors from multiple outlets including BAFTA for Best Story and sold millions of copies, revitalizing interest in interactive storytelling. Its portfolio expanded to include acclaimed series such as The Wolf Among Us, Batman: The Telltale Series, and Minecraft: Story Mode, collectively earning over 80 Game of the Year awards for innovative narrative design. However, rapid growth led to overexpansion and production issues, resulting in a 25% staff layoff in 2017 followed by a catastrophic 2018 closure where approximately 250 employees—90% of the workforce—were abruptly dismissed without severance or notice, prompting lawsuits over WARN Act violations and highlighting mismanagement. A new entity acquired the brand and select IPs in 2019 under LCG Entertainment, releasing titles like The Expanse: A Telltale Series while aiming for sustainable development, though it encountered delays on projects such as The Wolf Among Us 2 and significant layoffs in 2023 amid challenging market conditions.

History

Founding and Early Development (2004–2009)

Telltale Games was established in July 2004 in , by Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner, and Troy Molander, all former LucasArts employees who had contributed to development there. Connors served as CEO, Bruner as chief technology officer responsible for engine development, and Molander as a key producer; the group formed the company amid LucasArts' shift away from adventure titles, including the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, with the goal of sustaining the genre via episodic digital content to mitigate financial risks associated with full releases. Early efforts centered on building the proprietary Telltale Tool engine, first tested through , a poker simulator released on February 11, 2005, across PC and mobile platforms to refine internal pipelines for animation, scripting, and distribution. Securing licenses for independent properties, the studio released in September 2005 and in April 2006, adapting Jeff Smith's comic series, though the planned five-episode run stalled after two due to insufficient sales in a . A title, CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, followed in October 2006, leveraging the TV franchise for broader appeal but adhering to point-and-click amid declining genre popularity. The pivotal release was (Season One), an episodic revival of Steve Purcell's freelance police duo, launching October 17, 2006, with six installments concluding in 2007; it garnered critical praise for narrative depth and humor, achieving commercial viability through direct digital sales and rekindling interest in adventure games post-LucasArts' abandonment. This success prompted (Season Two) from November 2007 to April 2008, expanding the format with improved production values on PC, consoles, and mobile. By 2008–2009, Telltale diversified with Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, adapting the web series into five episodes from August 2008 to May 2009, and , a four-part collaboration with released March to July 2009, both emphasizing licensed IP to build audience via episodic drops. These projects navigated challenges like a shrinking adventure market and reliance on emerging digital storefronts, yet demonstrated viability through cost-effective serialization and targeted fan engagement.

Initial Growth and Genre Revival (2010–2013)

Following the modest successes of its early titles, Telltale Games expanded its portfolio with licensed episodic adventures, including Back to the Future: The Game in October 2010, which continued the studio's focus on narrative-driven gameplay tied to established franchises. In December 2010, the studio released Poker Night at the Inventory, a poker simulation featuring crossover characters from properties like Team Fortress 2, Borderlands, and Sam & Max, marking an experimental departure that integrated social gameplay with Telltale's storytelling approach. This was followed in 2011 by Jurassic Park: The Game, an episodic title set during the events of the 1993 film, emphasizing survival horror elements alongside choice-based narratives. The pivotal release came in 2012 with The Walking Dead, an episodic series based on Robert Kirkman's comic, debuting its first episode on April 24. The initial installment sold one million copies within its first two weeks, topping sales charts on platforms like Xbox Live Arcade and establishing Telltale's fastest-selling title to date. The full season, released across five episodes through November 2012, emphasized emotional decision-making and character relationships over traditional puzzles, shifting the adventure genre toward cinematic, player-influenced stories that resonated with broader audiences beyond core fans. This success propelled Telltale's growth, with The Walking Dead earning Game of the Year and Studio of the Year at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards, alongside wins for Best Adapted Game and Best Downloadable Game. By demonstrating commercial viability for narrative-focused adventures—selling over 8.5 million episodes by 2013—the title is credited with revitalizing the genre, which had declined since the 1990s dominance of point-and-click titles, by proving demand for accessible, emotionally engaging experiences on digital platforms. Entering 2013, Telltale leveraged this momentum to announce further expansions, including the debut of The Wolf Among Us, signaling a peak in licensed narrative gaming.

Franchise Expansion and Peak Popularity (2014–2016)

In 2014, Telltale Games capitalized on the critical and commercial success of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us by launching two new episodic series tied to major franchises. Tales from the Borderlands, developed in collaboration with Gearbox Software, debuted its first episode on November 25 for Windows, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4, with subsequent episodes releasing through October 2015 across additional platforms including Xbox One and iOS. The series received strong praise for its writing, humor, and character development, earning "Overwhelmingly Positive" user ratings on Steam based on over 10,000 reviews. Concurrently, Game of Thrones, licensed from HBO, premiered with "Iron From Ice" on December 2 for Windows and PlayStation 4, followed by console releases on December 3 for Xbox platforms and December 9 for PlayStation 3. These releases marked Telltale's push into high-profile intellectual properties, broadening its audience beyond original adventure game fans. The year 2015 saw further franchise diversification with the announcement and launch of Minecraft: Story Mode, a partnership with revealed in December 2014. The first episode launched on October 27 for , , Windows, and other platforms, introducing narrative-driven adventures within the block-building sandbox universe. This entry appealed to 's massive player base, emphasizing choice-based storytelling and crafting elements, and contributed to Telltale's growing portfolio of family-oriented titles alongside more mature series. By maintaining its episodic model, Telltale sustained engagement through regular content drops, with and completing their seasons amid positive media coverage that highlighted the studio's narrative expertise. By 2016, Telltale reached a high point in output and ambition, announcing Batman: A Telltale Game Series on December 4, 2015, in partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment, with the first episode premiering in August. This superhero entry, focusing on Bruce Wayne's personal struggles and detective work, aligned with the studio's strength in character-focused drama and expanded its reach into comic book adaptations. Complementing this, The Walking Dead: Michonne miniseries released in February 2016, bridging gaps in the zombie saga and reinforcing Telltale's flagship franchise. During this period, the studio managed multiple concurrent developments, earning acclaim for revitalizing adventure gaming through licensed properties, though internal scaling to support these projects foreshadowed later challenges.

Overextension and Internal Strains (2017)

In 2017, Telltale Games pursued aggressive expansion by announcing multiple high-profile projects, including Batman: The Enemy Within (set for release starting August 8), The Walking Dead: The Final Season, and The Wolf Among Us Season 2 (both slated for 2018), alongside ongoing work on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. This built on prior successes but strained the studio's capacity, as its proprietary engine and episodic production model struggled to support simultaneous development across numerous licensed franchises without proportional upgrades in tooling or staffing efficiency. Internal pressures intensified due to a pervasive crunch culture, where developers reported working extended hours—often 60-80 per week—to meet deadlines amid and inadequate planning. Co-founder and former CEO Bruner, who departed in March 2017, later described this as a "trial by fire" essential for survival, citing employee dedication but acknowledging management challenges in balancing workloads. Accounts from former staff highlighted toxic elements, including and resistance to reforms, exacerbating burnout as the studio's growth outpaced its ability to sustain quality or employee well-being. These strains culminated in a November 7, 2017, restructuring that laid off 90 employees—approximately 25% of Telltale's roughly 360-person workforce—across all divisions, with the company emphasizing a shift toward fewer, higher-quality releases to address production bottlenecks. The move followed Bruner's exit and the appointment of veteran Pete Hawley as CEO, signaling an attempt to curb overextension, though it foreshadowed deeper financial vulnerabilities exposed in subsequent years.

Mass Layoffs and Studio Closure (2018)

On September 21, 2018, Telltale Games announced a "majority studio closure," resulting in the immediate of approximately 250 employees out of a total staff of around 275, with only 25 retained to complete ongoing obligations such as the adaptation of : Story Mode Season Two. The dismissals occurred abruptly during an all-hands meeting, where CEO Pete Hawley informed staff of the decision, citing that the company had "ran out of time trying to get there" amid efforts to secure new partnerships. The official statement attributed the closure to "insurmountable challenges" following a difficult year, including insufficient sales revenue despite critical acclaim for titles like The Walking Dead: The Final Season, which had launched its first episode in August 2018. This followed prior workforce reductions, such as the November 2017 layoffs of 90 employees (about 25% of the then-approximately 310 staff), but the 2018 action represented a near-total shutdown, halting development on unannounced projects including a game and Season Two. Laid-off employees received no severance pay and faced immediate loss of health insurance within weeks, prompting a class-action lawsuit filed on September 25, 2018, alleging violations of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires 60 days' advance notice for mass layoffs. The suit sought unpaid wages and benefits equivalent to the notice period for the affected workers. By October 2018, the remaining skeleton crew had fulfilled their limited duties, effectively ending operations under the original studio structure.

Acquisition, Relaunch, and Ongoing Projects (2018–present)

In August 2019, LCG Entertainment, a led by industry executives Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, acquired key assets of the defunct Telltale Games, including intellectual properties, trademarks, technology, and select game licenses. The acquisition followed six months of negotiations after the studio's closure, with LCG announcing it would operate under the Telltale Games brand. Unlike the original Telltale's reliance on a proprietary engine, the relaunched entity committed to using 4 for future development, aiming for a lean operation with an initial team of 20 to 30 employees, including selectively rehired former staff. This shift was intended to enable smaller-scale projects and avoid the overextension that contributed to the prior shutdown. Post-relaunch efforts focused on reissuing back-catalog titles with enhancements and completing select new games. In December 2019, Telltale released updated versions of Batman: The Telltale Series and Batman: The Enemy Within, followed by the Batman: Shadows Edition compilation on December 17, 2019, featuring noir-style visual upgrades and remastered textures across all ten episodes. The studio also published The Expanse: A Telltale Series in July 2023, a single-season narrative adventure based on the television series. A flagship project, , originally greenlit in 2017 but halted by the 2018 closure, resumed development under the new entity, with five episodes planned using . In August 2023, Telltale acquired UK-based studio Flavourworks to bolster development capabilities, but weeks later, in early September, it conducted significant layoffs affecting most of its U.S.-based staff and personnel at Flavourworks. The company attributed the cuts to "current market conditions," confirming that in-development titles like would continue, though without specifying team size post-layoffs. As of October 2024, Telltale reiterated that remains in active development, denying rumors of imminent cancellation amid sparse public updates and internal uncertainties reported by some original writers. No additional major projects have been announced, with operations centered on completing the sequel and maintaining the legacy catalog.

Development Approach

Proprietary Tools and Engine Limitations

Telltale Games developed and relied exclusively on its proprietary engine, known as the Telltale Tool, for all titles from the studio's inception through its 2018 closure. Originating shortly after the company's founding in June 2004, the engine was tailored for episodic narrative-driven adventure games emphasizing cinematic presentation, branching dialogue, and quick-time interactions. It powered early releases such as Sam & Max Save the World (2006–2007) and evolved incrementally to support licensed franchises like The Walking Dead (2012), but required custom tools for asset management, including explorers for music, speech, and resolutions. The Telltale Tool exhibited significant limitations stemming from its aging architecture and insufficient updates, accumulating technical debt that impeded efficient development. Absent a built-in physics system, developers resorted to manual scripting for basic interactions, such as animating a rolling ball, which consumed disproportionate time and resources. This deficiency persisted largely unchanged following the success of The Walking Dead, exacerbating issues in later projects. Animations appeared stiff and robotic, scene transitions lagged—often inserting awkward pauses mid-dialogue—and performance faltered on mid-range hardware, with titles like Guardians of the Galaxy (2017) struggling to maintain stable frame rates on GPUs such as the GTX 970. These constraints manifested in recurrent bugs across multiple releases, undermining the engine's narrative focus. From 2012 to 2015, games including The Walking Dead: Season Two, Tales from the Borderlands, and Minecraft: Story Mode suffered from save system failures where player choices failed to propagate between episodes, alongside crashes, clipping, and unresponsive controls. By 2017, the engine's obsolescence contributed to broader production woes, as clunky workflows slowed iteration and prevented integration of advanced mechanics, further straining an overextended studio. In response to mounting inefficiencies after 14 years and over 30 games, Telltale announced plans in June 2018 to abandon the Telltale Tool in favor of Unity, aiming to leverage a more versatile, industry-standard platform for future titles. However, the studio's abrupt shutdown later that year precluded a full transition, leaving unresolved the technical bottlenecks that had increasingly compromised output quality and development velocity. Post-relaunch efforts under new ownership have shifted away from the original engine, adopting modern alternatives to circumvent these historical impediments.

Episodic Release Model

Telltale Games pioneered a serialized episodic release strategy for its titles, structuring games into self-contained episodes delivered digitally as over several months, mirroring television seasons to sustain player investment through narrative progression and choice persistence. This model debuted with the series, beginning with Episode 1 on October 17, 2006, and typically featured 4 to 5 episodes per season, each providing 90 minutes to two hours of gameplay focused on puzzle-solving, dialogue-driven interactions, and branching decisions. The approach leveraged digital distribution platforms like and console networks to minimize physical production costs and enable rapid iteration based on early feedback. Strategically, the episodic format reduced financial risk by allowing Telltale to release an initial episode at lower cost, test market viability, and generate recurring revenue from subsequent installments, while building anticipation via cliffhangers and community discourse on platforms like forums and social media. For instance, in The Walking Dead Season 1, the first episode launched on April 24, 2012, across PC, Mac, and PlayStation Network, followed by staggered releases that incorporated player choice statistics shared at episode ends to foster social engagement and highlight narrative variability. This pipeline enabled Telltale to maintain output across multiple licensed franchises, such as Batman: The Telltale Series and The Wolf Among Us, with episodes spaced 6 to 8 weeks apart to align development cycles. However, the model imposed development constraints, as parallel production for ongoing seasons often led to delays—such as the 9-week postponement of The Walking Dead Episode 2 due to script rewrites—and compressed timelines that strained resources without full episodes pre-completed. Prolonged intervals between releases risked player attrition, with later episodes experiencing sales drops from waning hype, piracy incentives during waits, and difficulty for newcomers entering mid-season due to serialized dependencies. While initially successful in reviving interest in story-centric adventures amid a market dominated by action titles, the approach's demands for consistent quality amid expanding project loads contributed to operational inefficiencies, as evidenced by Telltale's later struggles to sustain momentum across 10+ simultaneous series by 2017.

Narrative Choices and Branching Mechanics

Telltale Games implemented narrative choices primarily through timed dialogue wheels and quick-time action selections, compelling players to make decisions under duress that shape interpersonal dynamics and occasional survival outcomes. These mechanics emphasize moral ambiguity, with developers crafting scenarios featuring "no good choices" to evoke emotional investment rather than empowerment, as seen in decisions like whether to mercy-kill a bitten companion or prioritize one ally over another during crises. Branching occurs via a variable-tracking system in the Telltale Tool engine, where player selections set flags influencing subsequent dialogues, NPC attitudes, and select events, but reconverge around a fixed story spine to manage production feasibility. For example, in The Walking Dead (2012), choosing to save Duck or Shawn during a walker attack results in Shawn's death regardless, yet alters protagonist Lee's guilt, group trust levels, and later interactions, such as heightened tensions with Kenny if Duck is prioritized. Similarly, stealing food in Episode 2 affects perceptions of Lee's humanity, manifesting in deferred consequences like altered alliances, while end-of-episode stats compare individual choices against global player data to underscore variability. This state-based design, rather than exhaustive trees, allows for tailored tones—aggressive paths yielding combative responses, compassionate ones fostering loyalty—without overhauling major plot beats, a constraint developers attributed to handcrafting plausible branches amid tight schedules. Feedback cues, such as on-screen notifications like "Clementine will remember that," reinforce perceived agency, though analyses note that while relationships evolve meaningfully, sweeping divergences (e.g., averting key deaths like Larry's) were often discarded if they undermined coherence. The system's limitations, rooted in the aging Telltale Tool's scripting rigidity, prioritized intimate, character-focused ramifications over radical restructuring, enabling episodic releases but capping branch depth compared to resources permitting fuller divergence. Developers trained teams to conceptualize stories as modular states rather than linear branches, fostering replayability through personalized subplots while maintaining causal consistency in licensed universes like The Walking Dead, where choices propagate via relational logic rather than procedural generation.

Licensing and Publishing Strategy

Telltale Games initially focused on licensing rights from creators with ties to the genre's history, such as securing the from designer in 2005 to revive the series through episodic releases. This approach allowed the studio to build on established fan interest without developing entirely original IPs from scratch, partnering with niche publishers like The Adventure Company for retail distribution of : Season One in 2007. By 2010, Telltale expanded into broader media tie-ins via multi-title deals, including a partnership with Universal Partnerships & Licensing for : The Game, which broadened its gameplay styles while maintaining narrative focus. The studio's core strategy shifted toward acquiring high-profile licenses from television, comics, and film to tap into large existing audiences, exemplified by the 2012 deal with Skybound Entertainment for The Walking Dead, which propelled Telltale's commercial success through story-driven adaptations. Subsequent agreements included a multi-year, multi-title partnership with HBO Global Licensing announced on December 9, 2013, for Game of Thrones games premiering digitally in 2014, and deals for properties like Batman with Warner Bros. and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. This licensing emphasis aimed at low-risk, high-reward ventures by aligning episodic games with popular franchises' fanbases, often prioritizing addressable audience size in selection criteria. Publishing relied on self-distribution through digital platforms like and in-app stores to enable episodic rollouts and iterative revenue, minimizing upfront retail costs while retaining control over release schedules and narrative updates. For console and retail expansions, Telltale formed selective partnerships, but overreliance on licensed IPs strained resources as the studio juggled multiple simultaneous projects without proportional budget scaling. Following the 2018 closure, the relaunched Telltale under LCG Entertainment, announced August 28, 2019, retained key licenses like and Batman while partnering with for publishing and distribution to support back-catalog reissues and new titles. The new entity continued licensing pursuits, such as the December 9, 2021, collaboration with Television Group and Games for The Expanse: A Telltale Series, emphasizing co-development to distribute narrative risks. This evolved strategy maintains focus on licensed IPs but incorporates external studios to avoid prior overextension.

Major Games and Series

Sam & Max and Early Adventures

Telltale Games launched its signature episodic model with , a revival of Steve Purcell's cult series featuring the anthropomorphic dog Sam and his hyperactive "lagomorph" partner Max as freelance police solving surreal crimes through point-and-click puzzles, choices, and irreverent humor. The six-episode season debuted on October 17, 2006, with Episode 1: Culture Shock, followed by monthly releases culminating in Episode 6: Bright Side of the Moon on April 26, 2007, distributed via platforms like and later as a complete collection. This project, developed using Telltale's proprietary Telltale Tool engine derived from LucasArts' , marked the studio's shift toward serialized storytelling with cliffhangers, emphasizing narrative over complex mechanics and achieving critical praise for recapturing the original LucasArts spirit while introducing light branching paths. Building on its success, Telltale produced two additional Sam & Max seasons, solidifying the franchise as a cornerstone of its early output. Sam & Max: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls (Season Two) released five episodes from April 2008 to August 2008, introducing mechanics like possession powers and time manipulation amid escalating cosmic threats. Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse (Season Three), spanning five episodes from April 2010 to June 2010, centered on psychic toys and demonic artifacts, incorporating inventory-based puzzles and by David Nowlin and William Sadler. These seasons, totaling 16 episodes across roughly four years, demonstrated Telltale's commitment to licensed IP revival, with sales supporting studio growth despite modest budgets and a niche audience for adventure . Parallel to Sam & Max, Telltale's early adventures encompassed other point-and-click titles adapting comics, TV shows, and originals to its episodic format. The series, based on Jeff Smith's graphic novels, began with in 2005 and continued through Bone: The Great Cow Race in 2006, featuring platforming elements alongside puzzles in a . CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder (2006) adapted the procedural with forensic investigation mechanics, while (2008), licensed from web animations, delivered five humorous episodes centered on email responses and absurd schemes. (2009), a four-episode collaboration with , emphasized gadgetry and British whimsy, and (2009) revived LucasArts' pirate saga with five chapters blending comedy, swordplay, and voodoo lore under Ron Gilbert's oversight. These projects, released between 2005 and 2010, honed Telltale's workflow for quick iteration and cross-platform ports, though they often faced criticism for simplified controls and repetitive puzzles compared to predecessors. By 2010, this portfolio of approximately 20 episodic releases had established Telltale as a specialist in narrative-driven adventures, prioritizing licensed properties for accessibility and fan appeal over original IPs, with exemplifying the blend of satire, player agency, and serialized pacing that influenced later hits. Commercial viability varied, with stronger performers like enabling expansion, but the era underscored challenges in broadening appeal beyond adventure genre enthusiasts amid declining PC sales.

The Walking Dead Series

Telltale Games secured a licensing agreement with Robert Kirkman on February 19, 2011, to develop episodic adventure games based on The Walking Dead comic book series. The series emphasized player-driven narrative choices in a zombie apocalypse setting, diverging from the source material to center on original protagonists Lee Everett, a convicted murderer protecting young survivor Clementine, rather than adapting comic characters directly. Released episodically across multiple platforms including PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and later consoles, the games utilized motion-captured animations and voice acting to deliver cinematic storytelling, with choices influencing character relationships and outcomes, though many branches converged in a linear fashion. Season One launched with its first episode, , on April 24, 2012, followed by four more episodes through November 2012, plus the bridging 400 Days DLC in July 2013. The debut episode sold over 1 million units within two weeks of release. By the end of , the season had sold more than 8.5 million episodes across platforms, generating approximately $40 million in revenue at an average player spend of $16 per season. It received widespread critical acclaim for its emotional depth and voice performances, particularly as Lee and as , earning Game of the Year awards at events like the and over 90 such honors from various outlets. Season Two, released from December 2013 to March 2014 across five episodes, shifted focus to a teenage as the protagonist, exploring themes of survival and moral ambiguity in group dynamics. It garnered positive reviews for continuing the character-driven but faced criticism for reduced agency in choices compared to the first season. A three-episode , The Walking Dead: Michonne, centered on the comic character 's backstory and released between February and March 2016, achieved moderate of around 197,000 units on PC but underperformed relative to mainline entries. The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (marketed as Season Three), comprising five episodes from December 2016 to April 2017, introduced dual protagonists Javier García and returning characters like , emphasizing family bonds amid faction conflicts. Reception was mixed, with praise for expanded but detractors noting repetitive dialogue and technical glitches on older hardware. , intended as Clementine's concluding arc with five episodes starting 2018, saw Telltale's sudden closure after releasing the first two episodes in and 2018, leaving development incomplete. Skybound Games, under , assembled a team of former Telltale staff to finish episodes three and four, released in January and March 2019, preserving the story's focus on mentorship and ethical dilemmas for young Alvin Jr. The series collectively sold tens of millions of episodes, propelling Telltale from niche point-and-click developer to a leading force in licensed narrative gaming, though declining sales in later seasons—evident in A New Frontier achieving roughly one-twentieth of Season One's figures—highlighted challenges in sustaining momentum amid expanding scope and competition. It influenced the industry by demonstrating viability of choice-based, TV-like episodic formats, earning nominations like a 2019 Award for 's portrayal of diverse relationships, while underscoring limitations in branching narratives that prioritized emotional impact over systemic replayability.

Other Licensed Franchises

Back to the Future: The Game, released episodically from October 2010 to June 2011 across five parts, continued the story of the film trilogy with and Doc Brown time-traveling to 1931 to prevent a catastrophe. The series featured original voice work from actors like as Doc and Tom Wilson as Biff, and emphasized puzzle-solving integrated with cinematic storytelling true to the films' spirit. , launched in late as a four-episode series set amid the original 's park breakdown, followed prosecutor Miles Hammond and smugglers navigating threats on Isla Nublar. Developed to blend quick-time action events with choice-driven narratives, it introduced new characters while avoiding direct film cameos, though it faced criticism for uneven pacing and control issues on consoles. The Wolf Among Us, based on DC Comics' Fables series, debuted in October 2013 with five episodes centered on as sheriff of Fabletown, investigating murders among exiled fairy-tale characters in 1980s New York. Its noir detective style and earned acclaim for voice performances and visual art, distinguishing it through investigative branching paths that influenced later Telltale titles. Tales from the Borderlands, a 2014–2015 five-episode collaboration with Gearbox Software set between Borderlands 2 and 3, followed corporate vault hunter Rhys and con artist Fiona in a comedic heist narrative on Pandora. Highlighted for sharp dialogue, humor, and cel-shaded aesthetics matching the shooter series, it integrated quick-time combat and choices affecting alliances, achieving strong sales and narrative praise. Game of Thrones, released from December 2014 to November 2015 in six episodes, depicted the Forrester family's struggles during the War of the Five Kings, intertwining with HBO's series events through multi-perspective and survival choices. Despite fitting the franchise's political intrigue, it received mixed feedback for repetitive mechanics and perceived deviations from source lore. The Batman series encompassed Batman: The Telltale Series (2016, five episodes) and The Enemy Within (2017–2018, five episodes), exploring Bruce Wayne's dual life amid Gotham corruption, with player decisions shaping alliances like those with or . Featuring licensed voice talent including as Batman, the games innovated combat quick-time sequences but were hampered by engine limitations causing visual glitches. Minecraft: Story Mode, spanning two seasons (2015–2017, eight and three episodes respectively), cast players as Jesse assembling teams to combat the Wither Storm in a blocky world, incorporating elements like crafting into choice-based quests. Co-developed with Mojang, it appealed to younger audiences via accessible storytelling but lost digital availability post-Telltale's 2018 closure due to expired licenses.

Post-Relaunch Titles

Following its acquisition by LCG Entertainment in 2019 and subsequent relaunch, Telltale Games shifted focus to publishing narrative-driven titles developed by external studios, marking a departure from its prior in-house production model. The company's first original post-relaunch project was The Expanse: A Telltale Series, a five-episode set in the universe of the series The Expanse. Developed by Games and published by Telltale, the title casts players as Camina Drummer, second-in-command aboard the ship Artifact, during a high-risk salvage operation between the second and third seasons of the television adaptation. The game's first episode premiered on July 27, 2023, for , , Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via the , with subsequent episodes released bi-weekly to complete the season. Pre-orders began on June 1, 2023, offering to the debut episode 24 hours ahead for select platforms. emphasizes player-driven choices affecting crew dynamics, , and mission outcomes, with quick-time events and integrated into zero-gravity environments aboard the ship. The narrative explores themes of survival, loyalty, and interstellar tension, voiced by series actors including as . Reception for The Expanse: A Telltale Series was generally positive among fans of the source material, with praise for its faithful of the franchise's gritty realism and character-focused , though critics noted technical glitches, repetitive mechanics, and a runtime under 10 hours as shortcomings. On Steam, following its November 20, 2023, release there, it holds a "Mostly Positive" rating from 1,957 user reviews, with 76% approval, highlighting strong and atmospheric tension but critiquing combat simplicity and occasional bugs. Beyond The Expanse, Telltale has prioritized re-releases and enhanced editions of pre-2018 titles, such as Batman: Shadows Edition in 2024, which bundles remastered versions of Batman: The Telltale Series and Batman: The Enemy Within with updated visuals and DRM-free options. No additional original titles have launched as of October 2025, though development continues on , a announced in 2019 with episodic structure resuming Bigby Wolf's story post-first season events. Funding secured in February 2023 supported this project alongside an unannounced title, but delays have pushed its timeline indefinitely amid studio resource constraints.

Controversies and Criticisms

Workplace Culture and Crunch

Telltale Games experienced a pervasive culture of extended overtime, commonly referred to as crunch, particularly during the development of major titles from 2013 onward, as reported by multiple former employees. Developers frequently worked 60 to 80 hours per week, including weekends and holidays, with some shifts extending to 14 hours daily for periods lasting several months, especially on projects like The Walking Dead: Season Two and Batman: The Telltale Series. This practice was driven by aggressive project timelines and an episodic release model that prioritized rapid iteration over sustainable scheduling, leading to widespread burnout and health issues among staff. Management under CEO Pete Hawley exacerbated the environment through a top-down approach that demanded high output amid rapid studio expansion, fostering reports of , unrealistic scopes, and a lack of work-life balance. Anonymous employee accounts described a marked by , underpayment relative to hours worked, and a "use-and-discard" attitude toward talent, with reviews from 2016–2018 highlighting overwork as a core issue alongside broken promises on project planning. In March 2018, the studio abruptly laid off approximately 90 employees—about 10% of its workforce—amid these pressures, with affected staff citing crunch-related exhaustion as a factor in the company's operational strains. The crunch culture contributed directly to high turnover, with skilled narrative designers and programmers departing for more stable environments, which former developers linked to declining game quality in later releases. This internal dysfunction culminated in the September 21, 2018, mass layoffs of 250 out of 275 employees, executed without advance notice or severance, prompting a class-action alleging violations of federal and WARN Acts requiring 60 days' warning for such closures. The sudden shutdown left unfinished projects like The Walking Dead: The Final Season in limbo and underscored how unchecked crunch, combined with mismanagement, eroded the studio's viability despite earlier successes. Following the 2018 closure and subsequent revival under new ownership in 2019, the relaunched Telltale pledged a "non-crunch work environment," though details on implementation remain limited.

Technical and Design Shortcomings

Telltale Games' proprietary engine, known as the Telltale Tool, originated from early technology and remained largely unchanged for over a decade, leading to persistent performance degradation across titles. This outdated framework struggled with modern hardware demands, resulting in low frame rates, stuttering during quick-time events, and frequent crashes even on capable systems like those equipped with a GTX 970 GPU. For instance, Batman: The Telltale Series (2016) exhibited severe issues on PC, including audio desynchronization, game freezes, and texture glitches such as floating facial elements on characters. Titles like The Walking Dead series faced compounded problems, including save transfer failures between episodes on consoles such as Xbox One and unplayable bugs on mobile platforms like iOS and Android devices. Community reports highlighted animation glitches, delayed audio, and progression-blocking freezes, particularly in later episodes, which disrupted narrative flow and required workarounds like device switches. These issues stemmed from the engine's lack of a robust physics system and inefficient asset loading, exacerbating problems as game scopes expanded without corresponding upgrades. By 2018, Telltale abandoned the in-house engine in favor of Unity to address these systemic flaws, though this shift occurred amid the studio's collapse. On the design front, Telltale's gameplay emphasized cinematic presentation over mechanical depth, relying heavily on quick-time events and dialogue wheels that critics argued fostered repetition and minimal player engagement. This approach, evolving from point-and-click roots to linear "walking simulators," limited to scripted prompts, reducing titles to interactive cutscenes with illusory branching paths where choices rarely altered core outcomes. Reviewers noted that the formula prioritized licensed IP storytelling but failed to innovate , leading to fatigue from formulaic QTE sequences and underdeveloped . Graphics remained stylized and low-fidelity, with outdated textures and models that did not evolve, further highlighting a philosophy constrained by engine limitations and rapid production cycles.

Business Mismanagement and Overexpansion

Following the commercial breakthrough of The Walking Dead in 2012, which sold millions of episodes and earned multiple awards, Telltale Games pursued aggressive expansion by securing licenses for high-profile franchises and announcing an array of new titles. Staff numbers grew from 125 employees in 2012 to approximately 400 by 2017, enabling the studio to handle parallel developments such as The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, Batman: The Telltale Series, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Minecraft: Story Mode. This overextension, however, committed resources to numerous episodic projects with fixed release schedules, incurring substantial upfront licensing fees and development costs that outpaced revenue from subsequent releases. The strain manifested in operational inefficiencies, including shortened production timelines—often 18 months per season—and resistance to technical upgrades like adopting the , as reported by former staff who attributed these to leadership priorities under CEO Kevin Bruner. Declining sales for later titles, coupled with overreliance on the narrative-driven episodic formula without sufficient diversification, eroded financial stability despite initial hits. By late , these issues prompted a 25% workforce reduction, laying off around 90-100 employees on to streamline operations and prioritize quality over volume. Mismanagement exacerbated the overexpansion, with critiques highlighting a toxic culture of crunch and poor planning that drove talent attrition even before major cuts. Bruner's ouster in amid internal strife failed to avert crisis, as the studio's board hinged survival on an unsuccessful financing round. On September 21, 2018, Telltale executed a closure, abruptly dismissing over 250 employees—reducing headcount to a skeleton crew of 25 for contractual wrap-ups like Minecraft: Story Mode—without severance or prior notice, triggering lawsuits over WARN Act violations. The filing that followed underscored how unchecked growth and inadequate transformed a niche success into .

Unfinished Products and Consumer Backlash

On September 21, 2018, Telltale Games initiated a "majority studio closure," abruptly laying off nearly all of its approximately 250 employees and halting production on several in-development titles. This decision stemmed from the company's failure to secure emergency financing amid mounting financial pressures, leaving projects such as The Walking Dead: The Final Season—with only episodes 1 and 2 released—and Season 2 in limbo. The closure immediately jeopardized The Walking Dead: The Final Season, as internal reports indicated the remaining two episodes would not be completed by Telltale, prompting fears that season pass purchasers—many of whom had prepaid for the full four-episode arc—would receive incomplete content. Other announced projects, including adaptations of , , and , were outright cancelled before significant development, exacerbating perceptions of overcommitment to licensed IP without sustainable resources. Season 2, which had entered following its 2013 debut, faced indefinite suspension, with no further episodes produced under the original studio. Consumer backlash erupted swiftly, with players voicing outrage over unfulfilled season passes and pre-orders, particularly for The Walking Dead: The Final Season, leading to mass refund requests through platforms like , , and . Many reported difficulties obtaining support from Telltale's defunct , while digital storefronts extended refund policies beyond standard limits in response to the widespread complaints and incomplete deliveries. The suddenness of the shutdown, coupled with prior assurances of ongoing support for licensed series, fueled accusations of deceptive practices, as buyers had committed funds based on Telltale's track record of episodic releases despite evident operational strains. In the aftermath, external entities intervened to salvage select projects; LCG Entertainment acquired The Walking Dead: The Final Season assets and released episodes 3 and 4 in January and March 2019, respectively, though with noticeable delays and production hiccups attributable to the original disruption. However, The Wolf Among Us Season 2 remained stalled, with a post-relaunch Telltale Games attempting revival in 2019 only to face repeated delays, leaving it unreleased as of October 2025 and amplifying long-term consumer discontent over vaporware-like outcomes from the 2018 collapse. The episode underscored vulnerabilities in episodic gaming models reliant on continuous studio viability, eroding trust among fans who had invested in Telltale's narrative-driven ecosystem.

Legacy and Industry Impact

Contributions to Narrative-Driven Gaming

Telltale Games advanced narrative-driven gaming by shifting the adventure genre from puzzle-centric mechanics to emotionally resonant, choice-influenced stories delivered through an episodic digital release model. Beginning with titles like Sam & Max Save the World in 2006, the studio self-published episodes digitally, enabling frequent updates and serialized storytelling akin to television, which allowed for iterative narrative development based on player feedback. This approach culminated in The Walking Dead Season One, released starting April 24, 2012, where player decisions shaped character relationships and dialogue outcomes, with non-player characters retaining memory of prior choices to create personalized emotional arcs, such as the guardianship dynamic between protagonists Lee Everett and Clementine. The series emphasized cinematic presentation, integrating quick-time events for tension and dialogue wheels for branching paths, prioritizing player agency in moral dilemmas over traditional point-and-click puzzles, which had often hindered accessibility in earlier adventure games. This formula proved commercially viable, with The Walking Dead Season One selling 8.5 million episodes by January 2013 and reaching 17 million units for its five episodes, marking it as the best-selling episodic videogame. Critically, it garnered Game of the Year awards at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards, where Telltale also won Studio of the Year, alongside over 90 other Game of the Year honors and a BAFTA for Best Story in 2013. Telltale's model influenced subsequent narrative-focused titles by demonstrating that licensed properties could support original, player-driven tales exceeding source material expectations, as seen in adaptations like (2013), which explored themes of power and empathy through fable characters. Studios such as Dontnod Entertainment (, 2015) and Campo Santo (, 2016) adopted similar episodic, choice-heavy structures, while broader industry shifts toward interactive dramas in games like Detroit: Become Human (2018) echoed Telltale's emphasis on consequence-laden decisions fostering replayability and emotional investment. Despite limitations in true plot divergence—where overarching events remained largely fixed—the studio's work validated video games as a medium for prestige-style narratives, elevating player attachment to characters over mechanical complexity.

Economic and Operational Lessons

Telltale Games' 2018 collapse exemplified the perils of aggressive expansion without commensurate revenue growth, as the studio pursued multiple high-profile licensed projects simultaneously, straining resources and leading to diluted quality across titles like Batman: The Telltale Series and Guardians of the Galaxy. By late 2017, internal recognition of overcommitment prompted a 25% staff reduction—approximately 90 employees—but this failed to stem mounting financial pressures, culminating in the abrupt layoff of 250 workers (90% of the remaining workforce) on September 21, 2018, after two potential investors, AMC and Smilegate, withdrew funding the prior day. The company's assignment for the benefit of creditors, rather than formal bankruptcy, facilitated rapid liquidation of assets, including sale of debt to Sherwood Partners, underscoring how unbuffered debt from licensing deals eroded solvency when sales of later episodic releases underperformed relative to the benchmark set by The Walking Dead. Operationally, Telltale's adherence to short development cycles—often replicating the narrative formula of The Walking Dead across diverse IPs—fostered chronic crunch and burnout, while reliance on the aging Telltale Tool engine hindered innovation, such as inadequate physics simulation that demanded excessive manual labor for action sequences. Former employees noted that license holders' timelines precluded engine upgrades or delays, exacerbating quality declines evident in buggy releases and formulaic storytelling that alienated audiences amid rising competition from more mechanically diverse titles. Management's focus on volume over refinement, including resistance to adopting modern engines like Unreal, amplified these issues, as fragmented teams struggled to maintain coherence across an overloaded pipeline. These events highlight critical lessons for game studios: unchecked scaling via licensed content can impose rigid contractual burdens that outpace internal capacity, necessitating diversified revenue streams and prudent financial reserves to weather sales volatility. Operationally, sustained success demands investment in technological infrastructure and flexible processes to avoid stagnation, as rigid replication of past hits invites market fatigue; Telltale's post-2017 efforts to instill better under new leadership arrived too late to counteract entrenched mismanagement. The fallout, including unfinished projects like The Walking Dead: and WARN Act lawsuits over inadequate notices, further illustrates how opaque erodes trust and invites legal liabilities, reinforcing the need for transparent governance in high-risk .

Long-Term Influence and Successors

Telltale Games' emphasis on episodic, choice-driven narratives in licensed properties established a template for interactive storytelling that prioritized emotional engagement over mechanical complexity, influencing subsequent developers to integrate cinematic techniques with player agency in adventure genres. This approach, evident in titles like The Walking Dead (2012), which sold over 28.5 million episodes by 2015, demonstrated viability for story-focused games, prompting studios to adopt similar branching dialogue trees and consequence systems. Games such as Life is Strange (2015) by Dontnod Entertainment and Until Dawn (2015) by Supermassive Games echoed Telltale's model of time-sensitive decisions affecting character fates, achieving commercial success with Life is Strange surpassing 3 million units sold by 2017. The studio's revival following its 2018 provides a direct lineage, as LCG Entertainment acquired Telltale's and brand in August 2019, enabling continued production under the Telltale name. This entity released in episodic format starting in 2023 after delays from 2021 announcements, adhering to the original formula while incorporating modern engine upgrades like 5. Additionally, alumni-founded studios have extended Telltale's legacy; AdHoc Studio, comprising former Telltale directors and developers, launched Dispatch in 2025, a management sim with episodic releases and narrative choices mimicking Telltale's TV-like pacing. Telltale's operational model, despite its due to overexpansion, underscored risks in licensed IP dependency and crunch-driven development, informing industry caution toward sustainable pipelines. Successors have adapted by diversifying , as seen in Quantic Dream's Detroit: Become Human (2018), which expanded Telltale's choice illusions into fuller branching paths across 2,000+ dialogue variants, selling over 6 million copies by 2020. This evolution reflects Telltale's causal role in normalizing primacy, though critiques of illusory agency persist, with analyses noting limited true divergence in outcomes despite perceived impacts.

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  135. https://philiptw.medium.com/from-lucasarts-to-telltale-games-to-new-beginnings-7e4ac23d7445
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