Exporting Telltale.com Library (Steam/GOG)
Hi Telltale
I read the news today that Telltale is shutting down. I'm a longtime customer - I started supporting Telltale in 2008 - and I have a large collection of Telltale titles bought on your online shop. I still remember when you guys moved to a bigger office and launched a merch firesale, I must have spent hundreds of dollars on Sam and Max goodies. However, since the studio is shutting down I worry I won't have access to these titles any longer once this site is gone.
In order to keep enjoying these games in the future, is it possible to receive Steam or GOG codes so I can export my library out?
Through Telltale.com I own:
Game of Thrones
Tales from the Borderlands
Sam and Max Seasons 1-3
Hector
Back to the Future
Wallace and Gromit
Tales of Monkey Island
Strong Bad
Thank you for your help if you can provide it. I just want to enjoy these games even after you guys are gone. I really appreciate and love the work you guys did, especially the "classics" pre-Walking Dead. They'll always be my favourites.
Comments
I am currently downloading and backing up all the Telltale games I bought though the Telltale store. Hearing about the state Telltale is in, I would recommend anyone who has bought games through Telltale do the same. I am really glad that they supplied a lot of their older games with physical copies.
Yeah, I attempted emailing their support and other avenues but they all bounce back with a "sorry, support is closed indefinitely" form reply, meaning there must be no staff left in customer service. I don't think there's going to be any help coming for exporting and backing up purchases but it was worth a try.
Oh absolutely it is worth trying, but I am not going to take the risk in even assuming that this site will be around for much longer so I am backing up everything now.
GOG support would be nice but I highly doubt it will happen.
I'm not a staff member, so I'm not officially speaking for Telltale, and I have no inside knowledge of their plans for the games purchased from The Telltale Store, but Woodsyblue is probably correct in that you should backup your games from the Telltale store as soon as possible, because no one (not even the moderators) are sure how long it will be possible.
Thankfully, I noticed that Telltale Texas Hold'em was missing and supplied an image to the web team of my retail box prior to Telltale's shutdown, so every Telltale game is currently available to re-download from the Telltale Store if you purchased it previously.
Sadly, this doesn't count for the third party games available on the site, because I asked about that at the same time I mentioned the lack of Telltale Texas Hold'em, and I was told that the third party games weren't re-added to the site since the Telltale web team couldn't remove the DRM.
But all the games mentioned in the top post are definitely still available to re-download from Telltale (at least, for the time being).
I'd love to see this happen.... but it most likely won't. I had a hard drive failure not too long ago, and lost all my installers/installs I re-downloaded them again, but we all know hardware fails eventually. To have an alternate source for the games would be ideal. For example, mine are TWD Season's 1 & 2, Tales from the Borderlands, Jurassic Park, Puzzle Agent, Minecraft Story Mode & Adventure Pass... Luckily I have BTTF, Sam & Max, Monkey Island, Game of Thrones, the other TWD games, the Batman games, TWAU, Wallace & Grommit, Hector, all on Steam/GOG.
Don't the games have to phone home to the Telltale servers to launch though?
I have Batman, Batman Enemy Within, Guardians of the Galaxy and TWD S3 as Telltale keys (all my other Telltale games are on Steam). Those games are all installed with local saves, but will they still work in the future if the Telltale servers get shut down? It would be nice if Telltale issued some clarification on this.
I am actually trying to get the first season of The Walking Dead running and it is not starting because after I give it my user name and password the Telltale authentication doesn't seem to be doing anything which is... concerning.
Edit: Update: Tales from the Borderlands, which I own on Steam, seems to be working find and there was no issue with authentication.
New update: I managed to get The Walking Dead working by using my email instead of my user name (it said I could use either). Authentication seems to be doing fine for now, no idea if that will remain the case after they close.
See my comment here:
https://telltale.com/community/discussion/comment/2970819#Comment_2970819
You're SOL buddy, sorry.
The only alternative is piracy, which, mods, I realize is not allowed on the forum but it SERIOUSLY won't affect anyone now.
I'm guessing no one is around at Telltale to actually make this happen, but I really hope they can arrange for all their games to be made available on GOG and keys to be sent out to the users who bought the games in the Telltale shop rather than on Steam or GOG. Some titles are missing completely on GOG and some are missing their Mac versions (Sam & Max seasons 2 and 3 come to mind).
As far as I can see, "Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures" and "Jurassic Park: The Game" are both not available on any service other than Telltale's own site. I haven't gone through the entire catalog to check which actually use Telltale's DRM and which don't, but I'm pretty sure everything including Sam & Max Season One and later uses their authentication which needs to be removed for the games to continue being playable when Telltale's servers are shut down.
EDIT: It seems "Wallace & Gromit" and "Jurassic Park" are both DRM-free from the Telltale store. At least none of them asked me for authentication when installing or playing.
What about the episodes ? In the past, downloading the game meant downloading only the first episode and then the others were to be downloaded from the menu. Did they update the installers to have all episodes in them ?
I own all my games on Telltale's account on Steam as well, but I suppose I should download them to have DRM free backup copies. I am lacking storage space at the moment though.
Are the Steam versions Steam-dependant? Some Steam games will run even without Steam installed after you have installed them.
The older games were updated a while back to be DRM free, without having to connect to Telltale servers. I'm not sure where the cutoff of "older" is in this case though.
I'm pretty sure if you have them on Steam or PSN they won't get removed. Same happened with Alan Wake. When the developers of Alan Wake removed it from the steam store, it was still visible in my steam library, and still is. I doubt they'll actually remove the game from your library.
We're talking about our digital purchases on Telltale.com and their fate. Back in 2006-2008 Steam wasn't a major option so a lot of us chose to buy through Telltale directly. Especially because you got a free physical version if you paid shipping fees.
There is a way to backup even the newer Telltale games and after that there is no need to be online AT ALL. I figured this out a while ago and since then backed up all my games because you never know ....
1) Download (and backup) the game installer. Install the game run it and install all episodes.
2) Backup the "Archives" folder and pack it or simply store it. This folder is your season pass and contains all episodes.
3) Go to the folder C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents\Telltale Games\GAMENAME and backup the file ttcd.prop.
If you have backuped these you won't need to be online anymore. To install the game
1) Use the bacuped installer and install the game.
2) Extract the season pass into the archives folder.
3) Start the game once so the folder structure in documents can be created. Quit when asked for login or even earlier.
4) Put the ttcd.prop file into C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents\Telltale Games\GAMENAME
That's all
Keep in mind that each game has its own ttcd.prop file - so backup them seperately.
Tales of Monkey Island, BTTF, Hector, Sam and Max (Season 1-3), Strong Bad, Wallace and Gromit, Jurassic Park, Poker Night at the Inventory, Puzzle Agent, Puzzle Agent 2 are all DRM-free and therefore can be backuped easily
The Walking Dead Season 1 needs another way to be backed up. Install the game as usual and after installation export the registry key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Telltale Games\Launcher" which is your saved login data. If the registry key exist you are able to start the game in offline mode as well.
I know, it was kind of intended to the people who had it on steam or PSN
But yeah, hopefully you guys can still export it through the telltale website.