The dead shall rise again. Defunct narrative games developer Telltale Games are now in business again. Holding company LCG Entertainment have acquired the remains of the developers, including their backlog of games rights and IPs, and will be operating as Telltale Games.
This holding company is headed by Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, founder and CEO of Galaxy Pest Control and ex-sales-and-marketing head for Havok respectively.
Athlon Games, a publishing subsidiary owned by Chinese company Leyou Technologies Holdings Limited, will be Telltale’s publishing partner and have a stake of company ownership.
The new Telltale Games retains the backlog rights to their previous works like The Wolf Among Us and Batman, plus original IPs like Puzzle Agent, according to Polygon. Note thatThe Walking Dead, their breakthrough hit, is not included as Skybound Games have nabbed the license back when the original Telltale was collapsing.
Several key talent from the original studio have rejoined, either in full-time or under contract.
This is a similar case happened to THQ Nordic. When THQ were shut down, Nordic Games bought most of the IPs from the studio, including the THQ name, and operate under that banner. Or another older example, when Infogrames were operating under the Atari name.
While it’s good to see the backlog of Telltale games now have a chance to be reinstated on digital stores, let’s hope the new management learn from the past and not make the same managerial mistakes. Whether it will live up to the previous Telltale in terms of game quality, is another question.