Telltale Games Allegedly Fined $1 Million For Stranger Things Leaks

Published: October 19, 2018 3:34 PM /

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stranger things telltale

The fallout from the recent Telltale Games closure has been pretty unpleasant. We've learned more of the grisly details in the weeks since the company's messy shuttering, which led to them being sued over their spontaneous layoffs.

The reasons behind Telltale's closure are becoming increasingly clear. As ex-employees speak openly about their time at the company, the huge problems of mismanagement and a "fundamental misunderstanding" of its audience, as GameIndustry.biz's post-mortem says, become apparent.

This led to Telltale taking on too many projects and hiring too many people in an attempt to re-capture the success of 2012's The Walking DeadSuper Bunnyhop's breakdown of the company's failings details this further, exploring how poor management led to Telltale going broke.

The video also details tips from anonymous sources claiming that Telltale was fined for at least 1 million USD following leaks of their Netflix-partnered projects. A Stranger Things game was the at the core of these leaks, a traditional Telltale game based on the hit Netflix series. There was also a Minecraft project intended to bring "simple game experience" to the streaming service, that is believed to be the ongoing project Telltale is working on.

According to Super Bunnyhop, his sources talked of the threat of legal penalty if the non-disclosure agreement surrounding these projects was breached. When the leaks occurred and broke the terms of the NDA, Telltale were fined for "a decent chunk of money", later said to be over a million USD.

The video explains that these sources cited these leaks as being at least to partly to blame for the companies' troubles, at least according to Telltale management. It's hard to say how big of an impact this had on Telltale's overall situation, which was already pretty bad, but being fined over a million dollars isn't exactly a good thing. It also apparently soured other potential partners concerned about leaks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VR7Hl6SuXE


Quick Take

The recent revelations about Telltale's business practices and poor management have been eye-opening, to say the least. It was always rumored that Telltale was at the behest of questionable leadership, but the details that have come out have been pretty shocking. I highly recommend people read the GameIndsutry.biz post-mortem linked above. It's very interesting stuff.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

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tempstaff
| Staff Writer

Dan is a lover of games, music, and movies from the UK. He can usually be found buried in RPGs, shooters, roguelikes, and sometimes World of Warcraft, but… More about Dan