The Unfortunate Downfall Of Minecraft: Story Mode

Minecraft story mode when it was released in 2015 it was instantly popular I mean on release Minecraft was already sitting around 70 million copies sold so Minecraft story mode was known by everyone but a few years after the game came out the game had hit a point

Where you can’t even buy the game anymore you can only play the game now if you already own the game and have it downloaded this is the unfortunate decline of Minecraft story mode now what is Minecraft story mode well I assume most of you probably know what it is but

Just in case you don’t Minecraft story mode is a series of episodes of a story based off Minecraft and it was made by Telltale Games which at the time was one of the biggest game studios now Telltale Games were originally a small developer team it had like a handful of people in

The company who originally came from a studio in the 90s called Lucas art studios which was a subsidiary company of lucasfilms which you might know for making Star Wars but they were super successful in the 90s for their adventure games but as the studio aged they stopped focusing on said adventure

Games which is what a bunch of the devs were really passionate about and wanted to make so in 2004 they ended up leaving the camp company and three of them founded Telltale Games what they wanted to do is they want to bring back these point-and-click adventure games so they

Did and due to their notability in the gaming scene they were welcomed with a warm reception off the bat they took the approach of making these games more like interactive stories taking away elements like Puzzles and just leaving you with stuff like multiple choices getting the name Telltale off the bat what they

Wanted to do was they wanted to make a sequel to one of their popular games from the previous Studio Sam and Max but they wanted to do it in episodes but they had to wait until 2005’s for the Lucas Arts license to expire but as soon

As that did they were offered by the Creator an official license for the game and they eventually begun making that sequel but until they acquired that license they still needed to make other games to keep the company afloat and as they eventually got developed as a company with a few names under their

Belt they began to really hit the ground running they even acquired licenses for intellectual property from other media such as CSI Wallace and Gromit and they also made a poker simulator using characters from other games such as TF2 now after this point all of the titles that they made were mainly episodic

Games but in 2010 they decided to approach some more dramatic franchises and these more hard-hitting games really propelled the studio because they had more experience and things to prove now they were able to work with huge franchises such as Back to the Future and Jurassic Park which in 2010 already

Saw the studio making 10 million dollars in Revenue now that in itself is huge but in 2012 they saw the big one arrive it’s probably the reason why you know Telltale if you do know them they made their series of The Walking Dead games these saw millions of copies sold as

Well as millions of views on YouTube and in a few months it saw the company rake in a cool 40 million dollars in Revenue which then allowed it to get even bigger franchises to work with them and they used IPS such as Batman Game of Thrones

Guardians of the Galaxy and the one game that you clicked onto this video for Minecraft story mode now the game was officially announced in Minecon 2015 which was held in London that year well it was previously announced with a mini game that was on the Mojang website you

Can still play it it’s on the way back machine I’ll leave the link in the description but this 2015 MineCon this was the first time that we actually got to see Minecraft story mode in action the first trailer the game followed Jesse and their group of friends who

Aimed to bring back a group of adventurers called the order of the stone who once were known for defeating the Ender Dragon and they needed their help to save the world from imminent disaster where you solve puzzles defeat mobs and talk to characters to advance the storyline the main character Jesse

Starts as a little bit of a noob but develops and learns new skills throughout the game from other characters now the aim for Telltale with this game was not to step on the toes of Minecraft they didn’t want to change the original game at all they didn’t want to

Tell Laura about mobs structures characters like Steve they wanted to tell another story of a different Universe with a different character so it didn’t just feel like you were playing Minecraft it felt like its own game and that you were following a playable movie of someone else’s Story I

Mean to be fair for Telltale the game was really a perfect candidate to make a game out of you can do literally anything you want in Minecraft you create your own story so essentially for the team this was just a blank canvas but luckily the game wasn’t just a

Random storyline with no correlation to Minecraft just a quick project to make a buck prior to this game even being in development The Telltale Studios actually had their own private Minecraft server which they played on so the whole team already had experience and knowledge of the game and they could use

That to drive their inspiration they also wanted this game to be for literally everybody being family friendly for younger audiences to enjoy but also enjoyable for an older audience one of the devs actually said that they wanted to fill in a way similar to Ghostbuster films where the whole family

Loves her something else for the older audiences they also use notable voice actors from films such as Ratatouille Surfs Up Batman The Walking Dead Adventure Time a bunch a bunch of notable voice actors now this all sounds great right and like I said it was announced and it was time for the

Internet’s reaction which was super popular with everyone I also happen to lie every once in a while the reaction uh yeah it was very mixed some people love the art style compared it to the works of the YouTuber Element Animations in playable official game whereas some people thought the art style was

Insufferable and resembled the cringe Minecraft animations some people were instantly super excited to see a Minecraft storyline written and told by this incredible developer team and some people were thinking Telltale were just trying to get a quick Buck although one Reddit user actually made a good point

Against this and they mentioned how they thought the same with some of the old Telltale Games but then they got around to playing them and they were super coherent and they could tell that Telltale really knew what they were doing and they pulled everything into it

So they trusted this game to be the same on the note of cash grabbing this was announced a year after Minecraft had just been bought by Microsoft so people assumed that Microsoft was doing this and they were just throwing this project at their studio and it being a No Love

Project and commercializing what was once an indie game however this game was actually in development before Microsoft bought Minecraft a long time actually they said Microsoft had no impact on this project and Mojang personally worked super closely with Telltale here throughout the whole process making sure everything was perfect so it wasn’t just

A small project for them it was a big one with a lot of time dedicated to it like I said very mixed reviews for me I was super happy when this got announced and I love the game as well I mean what did you guys think when it got released

Did you enjoy it were you happy that it was coming out let me know in the comments but from what I can see from my research people really weren’t fond of it at all I think part of it could be that I was 13 at the time of release and

I was probably much more of a tiger audience compared to some of the people that were probably commenting about it on Reddit regardless in 2015 the game came out and it seemed pretty successful there’s no real way to see how many figures it sold completely but consoles

Was one of the biggest sellers for the game and the only thing I could find was steam sales which was somewhere between 200 and 500 000 so from Steam alone I think it’s pretty safe to say that the game sold pretty well and through 2015 to 2017 Telltale went on to release all

Of the episodes and even made a second season with a finale launching in late 2017. so everything looked good the company was also expanding and had hundreds of employees but what does this have to do with Minecraft story mode not even being available to purchase or play

Well in 2018 scene Telltale Games went bust but how the games were selling millions and the studio was known by everyone well the games in actuality never were selling as good as we thought apparently Telltale Games for years wasn’t even making a profit but why would the studio make games for years

That weren’t even profiting how can they even afford the hundreds of Staff they had well they had investors funding them for big games and some of the rumored investors were people like Microsoft probably to make the game console exclusives so they might not have made a

Profit on their sales of the game but the extra money that they got from the investors that fixed that loss and turned everything into a profit but the problem was that they relied on that investment they had licensing to some of the biggest franchises and with success

Of previous IP games like The Walking Dead they kept pumping these out to generate more and more money but that was the mistake from there the quality of the games they went down the studio thought they found a formula with The Walking Dead and they recreated the same

Game in different ways and the studio turned more into just a factory of games rather than a passion product a game that they loved making the way that Games should be they had too many contracts and were working on too many games and relied on the success of the

Franchises rather than their own original content and series and this all combined then saw the sales diminishing and as the sales figures dropped a big investor just suddenly pulled out the studio literally couldn’t afford to run they then laid off practically their whole staff team from over 400 members

To just 20 which then they had too many projects to fulfill for the amount of people that they had and with the now lack of funding they just had to shut the doors Telltale closed down and as this shocked the gaming world the company was no longer allowed to trade

Meaning every game in their catalog including Minecraft story mode was no longer allowed to be sold and so Minecraft himself officially announced that the game would no longer be able to be purchased at all Minecraft story mode it was gone if you already owned it you

Could download it but apart from that it was gone this has got to be one of the saddest closures of a game Studio the studio had other projects that people were excited about and they were going to release but we’ll never likely get to see them probably even including a new

Minecraft Story Mode chapter they had plans to have a new engine which they could develop more high quality games easier but they just didn’t have the time to make it because the amount of projects that they had this also meant that hundreds of people had now lost

Their job they had no severance pay and they were even told to leave the office within the next 30 minutes of being told and like that one of the most unique video game studios was gone it failed to do the one thing the company was founded to do a studio which would make

Adventure story games with passion and a love for making them they had lost that despite this heartbreak they’re actually back in 2019 the company was bought including all of their assets by lcg entertainment they were radio silent for a while but now in 2023 Telltale Games

Has two games coming out one brand new game and one sequel to one of their biggest Games The Wolf Among Us so with the studio coming back could we see a return of Minecraft story mode as much as I’d like to see The Return of it I

Can’t see it coming coming back if it does not anytime soon you gotta think the company won’t want to make the same mistakes it did once in the past and taking on a bunch of expensive IPS and working on a bunch of games aren’t their Originals I don’t see this series coming

Back anytime soon but what do you think will Minecraft story mode ever return will the studio be able to reacquire the rights to re-release these games at the end of the day though I’m just glad this Studio’s back doing what they once set out to do making incredible story games

However I do think this is the end of the line for Minecraft story mode but a new chapter for Telltale thank you guys so much for watching the video I really hope you did all enjoy it if you did consider subscribing literally 90 of the people that watch my videos aren’t

Subscribed so even if you think you are give it a check once again thank you for watching I’ll see you guys later bye