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Speaking as objectively as possible, Telltale Games has produced some of the best story-driven video games of the past decade. We don’t review a lot of games here at MEGATech News, but we covered a fair amount of their Walking Dead and Batman series over the years and remained fans throughout, though maybe to varying degrees.

The news broke last week that Telltale Games is in the process of shutting its doors for good. That decision seems to be a little up in the air now, with the possibility that the studio will remain open in some diminished fashion, but as things stand only 25 people will remain employed of the approximately 400 people that made up the staff. Some reports claim that the reduced crew remain only to fulfill contractual obligations before calling it quits themselves.

One of those obligations (or perhaps the sole obligation) is bringing Minecraft: Story Mode to Netflix, something that’s still happening. The other Telltale/Netflix collaboration was a game based on Netflix original Stranger Things, which Netflix is now looking at other studios to develop. The one game on everyone’s mind, though, is The Walking Dead, which only had two undeveloped episodes to go to wrap up the main series storyline and tell the final fate of long-time protagonist Clementine.

Then, just a few days after the initial layoff announcement, Telltale released this statement:

Multiple potential partners have stepped forward to express interest in helping to see The Final Season through to completion,” Telltale said on Twitter. “While we can’t make any promises today, we are actively working towards a solution that will allow episodes three and four to be completed and released in some form. In the meantime, episode two will release tomorrow across all platforms as planned. We hope to have answers for your other questions soon.”

The response has been largely positive, which isn’t surprising. Players want to finish the series and find out what happens to a character that they’ve literally seen grow from a child into an adult (in animated, time-jump fashion). The fact that we may never get a proper resolution to a story over six years in the making is heartbreaking. That’s a lot of time to invest in something, just to have it end abruptly and with no closure. I completely understand why fans would be overjoyed at the possibility of an ending.

I also don’t think they should finish the series.

Look, I understand the pain of becoming invested in something that never pans out. I’m still sore over Firefly. The Walking Dead is largely fantastic and I’d like to see it wrapped up properly just as much as the next fan, but I also can’t ignore what an injustice this would be to everyone who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into this series and worked countless hours of unpaid overtime, before being unceremoniously laid off with no severance only to see the fruits of their labor continue without them and generate revenue that they’ll never see. Telltale was able to forego severance pay because it was a closure rather than a downsizing, and yet with the studio still operating, it’s hard to say that they’re closed. This stinks of the studio exploiting a legal loophole and shouldn’t sit well with anyone.

I assume these “multiple potential partners” are interested in some sort of revenue-sharing deal, where they’ll foot the bill (partially or entirely) to see the final two Walking Dead episodes completed. Who’s going to complete them? The 25-person skeleton crew is supposedly working on Minecraft: Story Mode. Using these partners’ funds to bring in outside help to develop the game would be rubbing salt into the wound of the ex-employees and it would certainly beg the question of why Telltale didn’t pursue this option before gutting their staff.

As a fan of the series, I want to see it finished by the same people who started it but, as one Twitter user puts it:

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