Following Telltale layoffs, Netflix still wants to make a Stranger Things game
Minecraft: Story Mode still coming to Netflix as planned.
The mass layoffs at Telltale Games have put an end to its collaboration with Netflix on a Stranger Things game—but the streaming giant is exploring "other options" to ensure the project comes to life, it has confirmed.
The end of Telltale's work on a Stranger Things game—a project that was first announced in June—is no surprise, given that it looks like other other ongoing Telltale projects will go unfinished, including The Walking Dead: The Final Season.
Minecraft: Story mode, however, is still coming to Netflix later this year, with the remaining 25-strong skeleton crew at Telltale helping to finish it off.
As for Stranger Things, Netflix said in a statement to Variety that it was "in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium". Hopefully that just means that it's looking for another studio to take on the project—and I'm sure it won't be short of options.
The statement in full reads:
“We are saddened by news about Telltale Games. They developed many great games in the past and left an indelible mark in the industry. Minecraft: Story Mode is still moving forward as planned. We are in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium.”
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Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.