David chats with former Telltale Games community manager Nathan Ortega to get to the heart on how a once beloved studio could fall so hard.

Hearing that The Walking Dead developer Telltale Games would be going bankrupt was bad enough news for fans. Then the layoffs that put over 250 employees in dire straits with no severance pay made things worse. That’s when David reaches out to former Telltale community manager  Nathan Ortega to figure out what happened.

Join David and Nathan in a candid discussion of the work culture within Telltale Games that laid the groundwork for its eventual downfall. They also discuss declining game sales since the breakout hit of The Walking Dead, how that success developed bad habits for the company, and the way that Tales from the Borderlands was actually self-satire for the work conditions employees were in. The phrase “Handsome Jack is Telltale” pretty much says it all.

Although this is the end of Telltale, the lives of those employees negatively impacted are still going. Show kindness, support, and humanity. Remember that there are people behind the games we all enjoy.

• Daxnd Studios – Slipstream Scalawags
• Nathan Ortega on Twitter
• Telltale employees Ko-fi thread via Emily Grace Buck

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