When Telltale laid off around 250 employees back on September 21, the studio said a skeleton crew of 25 employees would finish off the last two episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Chapter. However, a new round of layoffs has hit the skeleton crew, and the number remaining is uncertain.
Yesterday afternoon, Rachel Noel, an ex-Narrative Designer at Telltale, posted a tweet:
Later tweets from Rachel offered some clarification. She had not been part of The Walking Dead team, and not everyone had been let go. Like the employees last month, the second round of layoffs did not come with severance. She also paraphrased the famous line from Blade Runner as she mourned the company’s failures:
According to Kotaku, various sources had some things to say about the layoffs and the fate of The Walking Dead: The Final Chapter. Telltale CEO Pete Hawley replied to an e-mail sent by Kotaku and stated that an official statement on the second round of cuts will be released some time between today and next Monday. He also informed them that the company is still continuing to work and “…do deal on [The Walking Dead].” Yesterday, a couple of anonymous sources close to the company said that Telltale is trying to put a deal together to have another company finish the last two episodes with the help of re-hired Telltale employees.
Meanwhile, yesterday at New York Comic-Con, Robert Kirkman, the writer and co-creator of The Walking Dead comics on which the Telltale adaptation is based, answered a question at a Q&A session about writing Clementine into the comics:
Stay tuned. Everyone involved is trying to make sure Clementine’s story is told. I’m not concerned at the moment with telling that story in the comics.
We’ll have more details on Telltale and the last two episodes as they come out.