ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Two games industry investors reopen Telltale

Two games industry investors reopen Telltale

Update:The new Telltale Games is going to be offering former employees freelance work, with the option of becoming full time later in the day. 

That's according to a piece from Polygon about the new studio, in which Ottilie says that staff who lost their jobs during Telltale's messy implosion last year would be offered freelance work.

Original story: Narrative-focused games studio Telltale Games has been revived by two industry vets. 

Studio manager and tech boss Jamie Ottilie and chief revenue officer and biz dev head Brian Waddle - as reported by GameDaily.biz - have revived the beloved studio which imploded in dramatic fashion in September 2018. Ottilie currently works at mobile, social and browser game firm Galaxy Pest Control, which he founded in 2010, while Waddle founded Road Dawg Games in February 2018 having previously worked at physics specialist Havok, Microsoft and outsourcing outfit Virtuous.

The duo have secured funding from Rebellion Games' Chris Kingsley, ex-White Wolf CEO Tobias Sjögren and Lyle Hall of Heavy Iron Studios as well as Athlon Games, who is both a shareholder and publisher for Telltale's existing franchises. That's on top of some unnamed investors. Ottilie and Waddle are going to be running the day-to-day operations of the company.

The GamesDaily.biz piece makes reference to a press release that we are unable to find, but apparently this new Telltale Games will be based in Malibu with another office located in Corte Madera, CA.

“There is still a huge fanbase of Telltale players and that’s one of the main reasons we decided to make this investment,” Waddle said.

“It’s hard to see your favourite games disappear or not get the sequels they deserve, so we thank everyone for their patience and support. We’ve got some exciting things to share soon. We’ll try not to keep them waiting too long, but we think fans will be pleased.”

Ottilie added: "I would say for the current games, we're definitely focused on creative and maintaining them. We didn't acquire the company -- we acquired the assets, which means all those people are gone, the publishing team's gone, and there's a void that needs to be filled there.

"We had our plates full with standing the company back up, getting the development pipeline working again, figuring out future content and the rest of it. So, it makes sense for us to find a partner with expertise in publishing and in PR that had a team that was already in place. And the Athlon guys were very excited to be involved. They're a shareholder in addition to acting as our publisher. So they are participating in the entire vision and rebirth at Telltale Games. How we manage that for future titles is still an open question."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.