The fallout after the closure of Telltale Games does not appear to even be close to over, with former employee Vernie Roberts filing a complaint against the company on Monday. This comes in the form of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all of the former workers, alleging that Telltale violated federal and California state labor laws with the layoffs.

The federal law in question is the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which was passed in 1988. As the name implies, companies with at least 100 workers must give notice of mass layoffs, which here is defined as the termination of at least 50 employees within a 30-day span, a full 60 days in advance. In California, where Telltale is based, the 100 worker threshold is lowered to 75 workers.

To summarize, Telltale had 275 employees, 250 all suddenly terminated without warning on Friday, September 21. None of these employees were offered any form of severance pay, and per Kotaku, workers were told that their health benefits would run out by the end of September and were given 30 minutes to leave the building. Even before this saga, Telltale co-founder and ex-CEO Kevin Bruner filed his own lawsuit against the company for alleged breach of contract back in June 2018.

What remains left of Telltale is trooping on, with the skeleton crew of 25 continuing work on bringing an interactive version of Minecraft: Story Mode to Netflix. The company is exploring ways to complete the last two episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season. Recently, some footage and art for the company’s canceled Stranger Things game were leaked online.

You can read the complaint in full below.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/389428519/content#from_embed

Posted: Sep 27, 2018 5:29 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/telltale-class-action-lawsuit/