Former Telltale CEO Sues Telltale Games
Lawyers will remember that
Might not be the most exciting story today, but this feels like a bit we need to cover. Last month, Telltale delayed The Wolf Among Us 2 until 2019 due to vague "we're making it better we promise" reasons. This comes at the end of a year or two of reports that life at Telltale is not going well, and that the internal operations have become increasingly toxic. Kevin Bruner, who helped launch the company in 2004, started as chief technology officer before becoming CEO in January 2015, and was forced out last year. Now he's suing Telltale for how his removal was handled. It's pretty complicated.
The basic gist is that last November, Bruner was replaced as CEO but was kept on the board of directors at Telltale. As this shift happened, Telltale let 90 employees go. Early in 2018, the deep-dive articles started coming out, revealing how bad the situation at Telltale had become (under Bruner's time in charge.) Then, a third CEO was appointed, and Bruner was finally pushed off of the board because his stock no longer held the required percentage of control in the company to vote on big decisions.
“The net effect of Bruner’s alleged removal from the board of directors was that Bruner was deprived of relevant insight into the management and financial state of Telltale and the value of its shares,” the lawsuit says. But Telltale claims the lawsuit is meritless and merely an act of revenge.
In mid-July, the case moves forward, and we'll see how this impacts the future of Telltale Games and Telltale's games.
In other recent Telltale news, Netflix has agreed to a license swap with the game company, exchanging Minecraft for Stranger Things -- which means, yes, Telltale is doing a Stranger Things game. Also, the final season of Telltale's The Walking Dead enters your bloodstream in mid-August.