Telltale Games‘ The Walking Dead The Final Season was left off halfway through the season after the developer laid off most of its staff. After some legal and logistical wrangling, Skybound Entertainment acquired the rights to Telltale’s Walking Dead games. Now, Skybound has officially restarted development on episodes 3 and 4 of The Final Season.
Skybound released an update regarding the final season of Telltale’s Walking Dead series earlier today. In it, the studio announced that many of the team members from Telltale signed on to continue work on the series, and that they began working at Skybound today. While no details on who exactly was joining Skybound to develop episodes 3 and 4 of The Walking Dead The Final Season, there had previously been at least 40 ex-Telltale employees in talks to restart development at Skybound.
The new developer said that release dates for the final two episodes would be announced “soon.” There was also a warning that previous seasons of The Walking Dead may be unavailable to purchase digitally for a few days during the transition period, but that everything should be back up sooner rather than later. Skybound also reassured that people who already purchased The Final Season won’t have to buy anything again.
Telltale Games laid off the majority of its staff in late September, following poor game sales and a round of funding that fell through. Following the “majority studio closure,” a small skeleton crew was kept on to fulfill obligations, although that crew was dismissed several weeks later. It’s unclear who is left at Telltale Games now.
The unceremonious termination of most of Telltale’s staff left the industry in shock, as ex-employees were blindsided by the closure. The 200 or more employees let go in late September received no severance pay, no warning, and their health insurance expired less than two weeks later. Several filed a class-action lawsuit against the company. The closure came during the middle of Telltale’s final season for the acclaimed Walking Dead series it had been working on since 2012.
We thought The Final Season was off to a good start, awarding the first episode a 4.5 and the second a 3.5 out of 5. Skybound Entertainment, the company founded by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, obtained the rights to Telltale’s series in October.
