This sort of thing makes me very glad I live in a country with legally guaranteed employee entitlements and public healthcare.
Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
21–30 of 197 posts
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#22The worst part for many of these people is that our country still links health insurance with your employer. It is bad enough to suddenly lose your job and primary source of income, but that type of thing is often unavoidable when a company goes belly up. However only getting a week's notice before all your health insurance benefits disappear is the type of thing that just shouldn't happen in this country.
Also notable that buying health insurance on your own, versus through your employer is typically 2 to 4x the cost.
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#23Anyone know what the unemployment benefits are like in CA? In WA state, "Unemployment benefits are made available through taxes paid by your former employer(s) to partially replace your regular earnings and help you meet expenses while you look for another job." Not sure what the situation is in CA but I'd hope that, in the absence of a severance package, there's something else that can help them land cleanly here...
A lot of things like COBRA go though your former employer. I wonder how many post-employment benfits work at when the former employer no longer exists.
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#24This studio closure hits a little close to me, since I know a few former employees: - They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable. - They were in the planning stages for an original IP, their new leadership realized too late that expensive IP licenses were unsustainable. - Thei…
> They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable.
Yeah, so this is just pure mismanagement. Either they couldn't do math, or they signed an agreement that required some sort of hidden balloon payment, or they couldn't reign in their costs when managers were allowed to buy things under the sun.
> Their frantic development pace meant that they their engine was a patchwork of features cobbled together over the years, and not enough resources to rework it, despite their audiences stating that they didn't care enough to fix it.
Again, mismanagement. Someone came up with a term that managers could understand: "Technical Debt". The "Debt" part is the "interest" you pay because you are prioritizing features over maintaining your tech stack. And no doubt would add to their frantic development pace.
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#25The worst part for many of these people is that our country still links health insurance with your employer. It is bad enough to suddenly lose your job and primary source of income, but that type of thing is often unavoidable when a company goes belly up. However only getting a week's notice before all your health insurance benefits disappear is the type of thing that just shouldn't happen in this country.
Also notable that buying health insurance on your own, versus through your employer is typically 2 to 4x the cost.
You can purchase your old benefit through FMLA for up to 36 months in an involuntary departure, but you pay 104% of the cost that previously was split between you and the employer.
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#26Adventure games seems to be a segment that is especially prone to boom and bust cycles. This has to be at least the third major collapse, following Infocom and LucasArts.
Even when well executed, the formula is hard to keep fresh, and the emphasis on story and writing leads to generally poor replayability. Particularly now, in the youtube/twitch age - most of the enjoyment of these kinds of games is watching the story play out, rather than actually playing the game.
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#27This studio closure hits a little close to me, since I know a few former employees: - They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable. - They were in the planning stages for an original IP, their new leadership realized too late that expensive IP licenses were unsustainable. - Thei…
I remember reading stuff a year ago about how the engine was originally written by the CEO and a large reason for its persistence until today is that it's basically his pet project. Do you happen to know how accurate this is?
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#28The worst part for many of these people is that our country still links health insurance with your employer. It is bad enough to suddenly lose your job and primary source of income, but that type of thing is often unavoidable when a company goes belly up. However only getting a week's notice before all your health insurance benefits disappear is the type of thing that just shouldn't happen in this country.
Just another among 10s of reasons why healthcare shouldn't be left to the market. Lining up capitalist incentives with public health is incredibly hard -- the people who need more expensive treatment more badly are almost always the people who are less capable of affording it, for evident reasons: being invalid made them unable to work, being in poor conditions in the first place led to their health conditions, it's all a vicious cycle.
It's fine to have subsidized higher tier insurance as an employee benefit, but basic coverage should be part of normal social security, or, in an ideal universe (or nordic country), something that hospitals don't even bill for because a few billion from taxes could go into the healthcare industry instead of military or roads.
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#29If you think about employment as a business transaction, then you should insist on "Cash Up Front", e.g. signing bonus, higher salary, or immediate stock ownership to offset your personal risk. Joining a company is more of a risk to you as an employee than it is to them in hiring you. Basically it comes down to asking for "Cash Up Front". Expecting a cash settlement on the backend of a failed business transaction is…
In an ideal world this would be feasible. Few people have the pricing power for their labor to do this. I'd classify what you call a failed business transaction as a failure of government to enact necessary labor laws.
Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance
#30Anyone know what the unemployment benefits are like in CA? In WA state, "Unemployment benefits are made available through taxes paid by your former employer(s) to partially replace your regular earnings and help you meet expenses while you look for another job." Not sure what the situation is in CA but I'd hope that, in the absence of a severance package, there's something else that can help them land cleanly here...
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