Telltale Games has announced that The Wolf Among Us 2 will no longer launch in 2023, with the studio citing developers’ health needs.
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The delay was announced last night (March 1) through Twitter, with Telltale Games confirming that the sequel to The Wolf Among Us has been delayed “out of 2023.”
“We started work on this in 2020 and we’re still determined to tell the ongoing story of Bigby and the rest of the Fabletown gang,” wrote Telltale. “However, it is going to require more time. As disappointed as you are hearing this, we feel worse having to say it.”
We’ve made the difficult decision to delay The Wolf Among Us 2 #TWAU2.
To give more context, we spoke with IGN: https://t.co/afoCUHZwIy pic.twitter.com/KhrAfIrwYB
— Telltale Games (@telltalegames) March 1, 2023
While Telltale acknowledged that the delay was “frustrating” for fans, it said the move was made to protect the health of developers working on the game.
Speaking to IGN, Telltale Games CEO Jamie Ottillie said a decision to move The Wolf Among Us 2 from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal 5 contributed to the longer development cycle. He went on to say that because the switch meant redoing “quite a bit of work”, Telltale Games was left with the option of releasing an unfinished game or cancelling its 2023 release window.
“If we put this game out and it’s not ready, we’re going to get torn to shreds,” Ottillie told IGN. “The expectations are pretty high, and we want time to meet those and we want to be proud of it and know that, ‘Hey, this is the best game we could have made.'”
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Ottillie added that part of the delay is due to “maintaining a healthy work culture” at Telltale. “We don’t want to burn out our good people,” shared the CEO, who said it has been “incredibly difficult” to recruit staff in the last two years.
“Burning people out or grinding them down is the wrong thing to do long-term. It’s not how you build a business,” he continued. “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.”
The delay comes as Ubisoft Montpellier reportedly faces a labour investigation from local authorities, due to unprecedented rates of developer burnout and sick leave.