Sadly, Telltale’s woes just won’t end. Telltale Games has been sued by a former employee that had been laid off by the company’s recent actions. According to Polygon, a class-action lawsuit was sued by Vernie Roberts “on behalf of himself and his fellow laid-off workers”. Roberts says that Telltale laid off the workers “without cause” and without any “advance written notice as required by the WARN Act”. The WARN Act, or Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, says that “most businesses with at least 100 full-time workers must notify employees 60 days in advance of any plant closings or mass layoffs”.
As for the definition of a “mass layoff”, the Act says that it is “a reduction of 50 or more employees within a 30-day period (if the total comprises at least one-third of the company’s workforce), or any layoff of 500 or more workers”. Polygon explained more about Roberts’ complaint, saying that”the total layoffs at Telltale amount to approximately 275 employees. The figure appears to include the layoffs that occurred Sept. 21, which media reports pegged at about 250 individuals, as well as the skeleton crew of 25 that remains at the studio as it winds down operations. Telltale terminated the employees without providing any severance, according to the complaint”.
According to Polygon, it won’t be easy for Telltale to defend themselves. There is one flaw in the WARN Act that they can use to defend themselves, but there is a catch. California has their own version of the WARN Act. This version doesn’t exclude “business circumstances”, and Telltale is based in California.
Good for them. If the head honchos are the ones that run the company into the ground, they shouldn’t lay everyone off just so they can shut down smoothly with an income.
Sounds like TellTale Games is basically ran by assholes similar to the assholes that ran Toys’R’Us into the ground. Basically assholes that want to make sure their company goes down while they walk away with a nice sum of money while their employees get the short end of the stick. If so, god riddance if this company bellies up in the next couple of months or years.
Toys R Us wuld’ve done fine if the person tht bought them didnt put the big debt on them to pay it off, which they never culd. (think of it like a bank loan to use to buy the rest of the company, then use the company itself to pay off the debt over time. Which lead to prices never getting better, etc. etc.)
In Telltales case they got famous way too fast, an indie company set with so many expectations in such a short time was bound to collapse on itself. (reason why a few of the original founders left after the success of Walking Dead season 1 bc they didnt want the company to rely on other ppls IPs. But at least they went to go and make Fire Watch, which was decently good.) Due to expectation they tried to run like a big company even though they didnt hav the training or the funds to b like a big company. Tried to take on too many projects at once and trying to meet demand, which lead to a toxic work environment.
So Ironically and unintentionally, it was some of the consumers fault. But anyways if only Telltale stopped using ppls IPs after they gained some attention after Sam & Max and Back to the Future. Maybe they wuld’ve still b around albeit not as well known or successful. But at least the employees wuldnt hav been screw over by the higher ups and the consumers.
translation: I was fired for smoking pot and looking at porn on my down time so they kicked me and my cohorts off the team when i was on break can you believe that? #smokepot420yolo.