Today, Telltale Games has made the smart decision to push back the release of The Wolf Among Us 2 out of 2023 to avoid crunch and burnout.
It looks like The Wolf Among Us 2 won’t be coming out anytime soon—Telltale Games announced on Wednesday that the sequel wouldn’t make its expected 2023 release. CEO Jamie Ottilie said they wouldn’t rush the project, so no estimated release window has been set. We’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes, but at least they’re not resorting to crunch to get it done.
“I’ve done [crunch], and I don’t want to do it again, and it’s not fair to ask it,” Ottilie outlined to IGN. “You can’t plan a business around it. So yeah, part of it is about maintaining a healthy work culture. We don’t want to burn out our good people. It has been incredibly difficult to recruit the last two years between COVID and the labour markets and the growth in the games industry.”
Ottilie goes on to say, “So certainly, burning people out or grinding them down is the wrong thing to do long-term. It’s not how you build a business. And as an industry, we’re terrible about it. We burn our people out. We burn our best people out faster. And as an industry, if we’re going to continue to grow, we have to stop it. We just have to stop doing it and make better choices.”
First announced at The Game Awards 2019, The Wolf Among Us 2 has faced some trouble on the road to release. First, with the pandemic, and then with an original release set for 2023, a move to Unreal 5 has changed things meaning some of the project had to be redone for the new engine. According to a report by IGN, this move is not just for vanity, and the team is making the switch due to the features and improvements present in the new engine.
While it has been a bit of a delay, the team seems passionate about delivering a quality release, and any move that avoids crunch is a solid step in the right direction for the industry. Stay tuned to CGMagazine to stay up to date on all things The Wolf Among Us 2 as more news is revealed.
