The Walking Dead: The Final Season was delisted from Steam and GOG in September, shortly after Telltale's wheels came off. The series was eventually picked up by Skybound Games, which said in November that the games would be "back online ASAP." Today that finally happened, with a little bit of a twist.

People who purchased the game on Steam or GOG will get the rest of the episodes in the series on their original platform, but for everyone else, it will only be available for purchase on the Epic Games Store.

"The team at Epic owns a major chapter in the history of the game industry. We’re excited to work together on their latest transformative event with the launch of the Epic Games Store," Skybound CEO Ian Howe and president of interactive Dan Murray said in a joint statement. "Epic stepped up to the plate immediately to work with us in order to bring the original team back together and ensure fans will receive the completed season of Telltale's The Walking Dead: The Final Season." 

The Walking Dead: The Final Season is now listed on the Epic Store but isn't currently available for purchase, so there's no information on pricing. The Steam listing is still in place but has no purchase links; instead there's a message stating that "existing Season Pass purchasers will get automatic access to Episodes 3 & 4 on Steam on their release date." There's no visible listing for it at all on GOG right now. 

The Walking Dead: The Final Season comes out on January 15. To be perfectly clear about it, if you've previously purchased the game elsewhere, you do not need to re-buy it on the Epic Store. Skybound also called on the talents of Clementine voice actor Melissa Hutchison to answer some frequently asked questions: Older TWD seasons will remain available on their original platforms, cloud saves will carry over, and Skybound is not currently working on any other Telltale games.   

Skybound Games revealed a couple of weeks ago that it would finish work on The Walking Dead: The Final Season, which had been left in limbo following the collapse of Telltale Games. It also committed to working with members of the Telltale development team on the project, a small bit of good news for at least some of its former employees. 

In a recent AMA on Reddit, Skybound CEO Ian Howe went even further, saying that the goal is to build the entire TWD development team out of ex-Telltalers. 

"The plan is for it to be staffed 100% by former Telltale staff, the only time we'd look elsewhere is if we can't fill a particular role from former TT people," Howe wrote. "I can't go into details but the team will be working directly for Skybound to complete game."

It won't be a wholesale transplant of the team from Telltale to Skybound, as Howe explained that "people roll on and off of projects" as their development progresses. "That means there are people who were on the team who were close to rolling off onto something else," he wrote. "It's unfair to ask someone to come back and do a couple of weeks work, especially if that would get in the way of another job offer, so this is just one example of some of the challenges we face." 

The story itself will not be changed, however, and Clementine's story will conclude as it was meant to: "The process of developing the narrative isn’t changing, there is a long standing collaboration between the writers and Skybound over story approval and all the same people will still be involved." 

There's no word as to when all of this will happen, as development hasn't actually resumed yet, and "until we're back into production, it's going to be nearly impossible to give an accurate [date]." But it may not be too much of a wait, as Howe said he expects Episode 3 to be out before the end of the year. "I'll be very disappointed if we can't make that happen," he said. 

He also left the door open to DLC, or possibly even new Telltale-style games. "Our first priority it to complete the story, once we feel that we're in good shape to do that, we'll look at all the other possibilities and we love hearing the ideas and suggestions," he said. 

"There [is] nothing in active development yet, but we're always talking  about how we can tell interesting stories in games. I'm really spending a  lot of time at the moment looking at new technologies and how that can  allow us to deliver strong narrative based games."

Motivated by the sad news of Telltale's majority closure, former employee Jake Rodkin—who left the studio to co-found Campo Santo several years ago and is not one of those laid off without severance—has been uploading videos of prototypes, goofs, and "DVD bonus features" to YouTube. So far the videos at Old Telltale Stuff focus on the studio's middle-period, games like Sam & Max, Strong Bad's Cool Game For Awesome People, Back to the Future, and the first season of The Walking Dead. 

The highlight so far has been an alternate version of the scene from The Walking Dead where Lee runs a gauntlet of zombies. Made as a way of letting off steam toward the end of production, it shows a side of the team that Tales from the Borderlands would really allow them to develop. (Spoilers for The Walking Dead, obv.)

Other highlights include developer's commentary for all three seasons of Sam & Max as well as Back to the Future, blooper reels, a video of Lee dealing with an empty cabinet in a calm and measured way, and a spontaneous Strong Bad episode being made with help from the audience at PAX.

I'll leave you with something less funny. This compilation of behind-the-scenes footage from the office showing people letting their hair down—cheering as The Walking Dead wins awards, enjoying 'Wine Fridays', and recording reference footage for fight scenes by bashing each other with foam props—is made bittersweet by the knowledge of how it would end up for them. Here's hoping they land on their feet.

A former Telltale Games employee has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that the recent layoff of more than 250 employees without warning or severance is a violation of the WARN [Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifcation] Act.   

Available via Polygon, the lawsuit alleges that "the defendant violated the WARN act by failing to give the plaintiff and the class of similarly situated employees he seeks to represent at least 60 days advance written notice of termination, as required by the WARN Act." That class, if approved by the court, will include approximately 275 employees, including those who were let go and the skeleton crew that remains employed at Telltale. 

The lawsuit seeks "an amount equal to the sum of all of the Aggrieved Employees': unpaid wages, salary, commissions, bonuses, accrued holiday pay, accrued vacation pay, pension and 401(k) contributions and other ERISA benefits, for sixty days following the member employee's termination." Interest, attorney's fees, and "such other and further relief as this Court may deem just and proper," are also requested. 

The WARN Act requires that companies of a certain size provide notice prior to layoffs, but the situation is complicated by exemptions, including "unforeseeable business circumstances," for which Telltale may be eligible: Variety reports that the end came very abruptly when a partner, rumored to be Lionsgates, suddenly backed out of its funding deal with Telltale, leading Telltale to cancel its Stranger Things deal with Netflix.   

But Telltale's problem, as explained in this detailed breakdown of the situation at GameDaily.biz, is that California has its own version of the WARN Act without a "unforeseeable business event" exemption. As Telltale is based in the state, it could find itself on the hook for penalties at the state level, even if it is exempted at the federal level. 

The bottom line is that it's a legally complex situation that doesn't look particularly good for Telltale and will likely take a long time to untangle. The matter is complicated further by the fact that Telltale, despite its near-annihilation, is not technically closing yet: Telltale issued a statement yesterday saying that it is in talks with "multiple potential partners" about finishing The Walking Dead: The Final Season, and CEO Pete Hawley tweeted earlier this week, "To be clear, we're not shutting down. As odd as that may sound, 25 of us will continue, foreseeable. I'll make further comment in the coming weeks." 

I've reached out to Telltale for comment on the lawsuit, and to ask if a revival of The Walking Dead: The Final Season will enable the company's former employees to be paid severance, and will update if I receive a reply. 

What do game developers do when they're desperately bored? If the developer in question is Sean Ainsworth, a designer, writer, and artist on Telltale releases including Tales from the Borderlands, Minecraft: Story Mode, and The Walking Dead, he makes an "alternate ending" to TWD Season One that we have decided is officially canon. 

The video, brought to our attention by former Telltale designer and director Jake Rodkin, was created during the final days of work on The Walking Dead Season One. "The last week of production on Season 1, it was just me and @Spainsy left waiting for any last minute bugs," Rodkin tweeted. "He made this during that stir crazy week." 

Ainsworth confirmed that he was responsible for it, calling it a "weird, dumb thing."   

Be that as it may, it's pretty great, too. Is it actually canon? It was created by Telltale for a game built on the "choose your own adventure" design, and described by the designer and director on the project as an "alternate ending." That's good enough for me!

Sadly, Telltale remains in a dire, last-days state, and despite CEO Pete Hawley's insistence that the studio is not closing down, it's hard to foresee any other realistic outcome. We took a look at its legacy, and why it matters, here.

The sudden collapse of Telltale Games took most by surprise, including its own employees. In a snap of the finger, the storyteller became a shell of its former self, leaving fans in the lurch, its employees scrabbling for work on Twitter, and the last series of The Walking Dead apparently abandoned half-finished. At the time of writing there is little hope of us ever getting to finish Clementine’s story. 

An ignominious fate for an influential company. Telltale is one of the few studios to make episodic gaming work, and its adventure game template would go on to inspire many others, much as its own work was inspired by the hit adventures of LucasArts during its glory years.

Given the success of games like The Walking Dead and the high-profile licenses that followed it—Minecraft, Batman and Game of Thrones in particular—it’s hard to remember that Telltale originally started as a very small fish in an admittedly relatively empty barrel. Adventure games weren’t dead—they never have been—but they were certainly on the outs after LucasArts canned planned games like Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max 2 in the interests of making more terrible Star Wars prequel games. 

Telltale started out with a series based on the Bone comics and the basically forgotten CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder and Texas Hold’Em, but it was with Sam & Max that they really shot to the world’s attention. Former LucasArts staff, including names like Day of the Tentacle creator Dave Grossman, starting a whole new company devoted to adventures? 

What could possibly go wrong? 

At this point, we know most of the answer. In public, Telltale’s output almost immediately suffered as relatively primitive technology was stretched to fit every new license into the same template. Early on, that was the ‘Three Trials’ structure—intro, three objectives, ending, rinse, repeat. Behind the scenes, reports of crunch and mismanagement tell a tale of a company over-stretching. 

The launch of The Walking Dead seemed to herald a new era for the company, in which games would finally be designed around licenses rather than shoved into a template. Sadly, the message the company took from the success was almost the opposite. Memorable elements like "X will remember that" went from a clever gimmick to a tired statement, and too often smoke-and-mirrors presentation hid a lack of real choice.

The most frustrating part of this on the outside though was knowing just how much better they could have been. Telltale had incredible talent at its disposal, and it’s often overlooked by players and press just as much as it was internally. Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse was a superb attempt to break the formula, giving the Freelance Police a grittier world that regularly tried new things, like Sam’s noir-laced rampage and an episode where Max has to be the brains of the operation.  

Back To The Future, a mostly forgettable series, still had thoughtful design that explored Doc’s past in a way that was both faithful and ambitious, with my favourite scene showing that even a Doc in charge of a dystopian city is still a Doc driven by compassion and loyalty.

Tales From The Borderlands was an amazing ride, while Batman: The Enemy Within presented us with one of the most fascinating takes on The Joker ever committed to any kind of screen. In what other series or medium would you be playing as Batman, offering Joker tips on romancing Harley Quinn? Never mind doing it while nursing the hope that, just maybe, you could steer him away from crime, even knowing that it’ll all end in tears.

This was Telltale. The music of Jared Emerson-Johnson, the design of people like Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, the acting and writing and cinematography of a whole army of excellent people that frankly the company often didn't deserve.

Now, I’m not saying everything the Telltale touched turned to gold. It didn’t. Jurassic Park in particular is best forgotten. But as with every story, there’s nuance in the telling that deserves to be celebrated. I personally didn’t like Game of Thrones very much, but the opening chapter was majestic—in their most powerful moments, Telltale games put you you in the boots of characters making desperate choices. My favourite scene in The Walking Dead isn’t one of the big dramatic ones, but the simple decision of which hungry people to feed, and how it makes you wonder, just for a moment, what you would have done in their place. 

There aren’t many Telltale games where I can’t pick out at least a few fantastic moments. Even within the often suffocating templates, pre- and post-The Walking Dead, Telltale’s creative teams repeatedly pushed boundaries and experimented in ways that didn’t get enough credit. Batman, to give just one example, mined new ground by splitting the action between Batman and Bruce Wayne, with a particular focus on Wayne. The series skirted issues of good and evil and instead pressured you with horrible choices about who would get hurt as a result of your actions. The new series of The Walking Dead looked to be taking things in another interesting direction, somewhat like BioShock 2, by having your decisions primarily affect your ward, AJ, instead of the player-controlled Clementine.

A lasting impact

The effect of Telltale on the wider market can’t be ignored. Telltale games showed that adventures have to be dramatic and exciting things, not staid, backward-staring affairs. Telltale games directly inspired Life Is Strange and Dreamfall Chapters, and former members went on to create the beloved Firewatch and the upcoming In The Valley Of Gods. More than anything else, Telltale proved that adventures weren’t simply alive and well, but that they could reach a mainstream and hardcore audience on any platform. They didn’t save adventure games, because adventures didn’t need saving, but they damn well gave them a much needed shot of adrenaline to the proverbial genre-buttocks.

Still, the true legacy of Telltale deserves to be something else. Whatever its sins, and however poor many of its corporate decisions have been, we should remember it not as some anonymous gestalt, but for the work of an army of writers, artists, developers and more who cranked out often amazing stuff in very difficult situations. We can only hope that as many of them as possible find new positions in the games industry and continue to knock out those jams, hopefully in rather more comfort and on a less demanding schedule. There aren’t many companies that have touched so many people with their stories, and taken us on such exciting, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking adventures.

We will remember that.

By all appearances, the closure of Telltale Games meant the end of the incomplete The Walking Dead: The Final Season. There was some faint hope among fans that the studio would be able to finish it, but Clementine voice actor Melissa Hutchison and designers Emily Grace Buck and Michael Kirkbride both strongly suggested that it wouldn't happen.   

In a tweet released ahead of tomorrow's launch of TWD: The Final Episode chapter 2, however, Telltale suggested that it might still happen. 

That's a long way from carved in stone, but it's more than fans had to hang onto a few hours ago.   

It's not surprising that other studios would be interested in the property: The Walking Dead is Telltale's flagship series, and the studio's collapse has focused attention on it. It won't mitigate the damage wrought by Telltale's sudden shutdown, but if someone like Paradox or THQ Nordic can pick it up, maybe bring on some of the original development team (at least temporarily), and deliver the balance of The Final Season, it will at least bring closure to the series that really put Telltale on the map.

The sudden, shocking closure of Telltale Games last week was deeply disappointing for fans of its games, including The Wolf Among Us, Tales From the Borderlands, and The Walking Dead. That last one is a particularly stinging loss because The Walking Dead: The Final Season, which would conclude Clementine's narrative, just got underway in August and will almost certainly go unfinished. 

But designer Emily Grace Buck, whose credits at Telltale include TWD: The Final Season, Batman, and Guardians of the Galaxy, posted a series of tweets after the closure was confirmed to remind everyone that the real damage runs much deeper. Roughly 250 Telltale employees were let go with no severance pay, she said, a figure slightly higher than initial counts, and many of them were contractors, meaning that they're not eligible for unemployment. Their workplace health coverage, which is particularly vital in the US, will also be cut off just one week after the closure. 

Even uglier is that according to Buck, Telltale had new employees starting work at the studio just a week prior to the shutdown announcement, some of whom had relocated for their jobs. At least one former employee is a foreign national on a work visa, who will have to leave the US "within days" as a result of the closure. 

"Due to the insanely high cost of living in the Bay Area relative to payscale, many of my (unbelievably skilled and talented!!!) colleagues were living paycheck to paycheck and do not know what they are going to do to make ends meet this month," she wrote. 

Buck also confirmed that the second season of The Wolf Among Us is canceled, as is the Stranger Things project, although Netflix still wants to push ahead with that elsewhere. The second episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season is expected to release on schedule, but there's no real hope of it proceeding beyond that point: Melissa Hutchinson, who provides the voice of Clementine, suggested yesterday that the game will not be finished, and former season lead designer Michael Kirkbride was somewhat more definite about it on Reddit, encouraging fans to "at least give the [second] episode a try, even if it'll be uniquely placed in the tragic history of Telltale's efforts." 

"We know it’s weird, we know it sucks, we know it’s sad in ways that’s almost impossible to articulate, and we know it’s awful that we can’t tell you what would’ve happened after, but the episode is also just goddamn good, and the best feeling we could have right now is to know it’s being played," he wrote. 

Echoing Kirkbride's statement about not being able to share Telltale's plan for the remainder of The Final Season, Buck also shot down a suggestion that the script be shared online, so players can at least find out what happened.   

Melissa Hutchison, who provided the voice for Clementine in The Walking Dead as well as characters in other Telltale releases like Puzzle Agent, Back to the Future, and The Wolf Among Us, has written a sad farewell to the studio that recently confirmed a majority closure. She writes, "I, unfortunately, like most of you, do not have the details on how this all came to be and I also do not know the fate of the final season of TWD. To my knowledge, they will release Episode 2 and then that will be it."

This lines up with US Gamer's reporting. "Our sources say The Walking Dead Final Season is set to end after the second episode launches next week", they wrote.

The second episode of the season, which was apparently completed before the closure was announced, is due for release on September 25. At least one player who bought the full season has managed to get a refund from Steam.

According to an official statement from the studio, "Telltale will issue further comments regarding its product portfolio in the coming weeks."

Telltale has detailed how long we'll have to wait in-between instalments of its latest episodic adventure, The Walking Dead: The Final Season.

In a tweet from the company's official Twitter account, the developer confirmed there'll be roughly six weeks between each chapter, culminating in the final episode—called Take Us Back—which is expected to release just in time for the holidays on December 18, 2018.

The two other instalments between episode one and the final chapter—cheerfully entitled Suffer the Children and Broken Toys—will release on September 25 and November 6 respectively.

Naturally, even the best laid plans may come undone and it's possible the release schedule will slip, but the advance notice is at least an indication of Telltale's desire to speed up its chapter distribution. It took seven months for us to get from season one's opening episode in April 2012 to the closing chapter in November 2012—an agonising wait for some, particularly given Telltale's penchant for cliffhanger endings.

The Walking Dead: The Final Season's first episode is out now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. If you've already finished up but still looking for a Clem fix, check out our latest feature on how The Walking Dead's final season is changing the rules.