Trivia / Overkill's The Walking Dead

• Content Leak: On October 20, 2023, a dev build for the game was leaked on 4chan's /v/ board, containing not only all the content the public build has with the online DRM removed, but the finished and unreleased 4 episodes up to Episode 7.
• Creator Killer: Dangerously close to becoming one for both OVERKILL Software and Starbreeze at this point after its flop^note Though not the only reason; both studios had lost most of their money on the game's Troubled Production and a series of bad investments and needed Walking Dead to do well to right the ship, which it didn't do and just to add insult to injury, the license holder, Skybound Entertainment, terminated their contract with Starbreeze before OVERKILL could even finish Season 2, pulling the game from stores. Simply put, neither company had money at this point to continue game development, and Walking Dead could no longer provide income, leaving the developers up a creek without a paddle^note the only other series of note that they had was the PAYDAY series, whose second installment had just wrapped up its post-launch support in the days before Walking Dead was released, leaving them with no income aside from residual sales. The situation was so dire that, despite selling off most of their studios, publishing rights, and other property, they had to break their promise of PAYDAY 2's "Ultimate Edition" marking the end of paid DLC content and start developing more content (free and paid) for the game a year after support had originally ended in order to make enough money to develop a sequel; a sequel that wasn't due for at least another three years.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: After the game was pulled off from Steam in February 2019, the only way to obtain the game is only through gray market key reselling sites. That and if one managed to buy anyway, while the servers are still up (for now), very few people are still playing. A developer build that can be played offline was leaked, but is of course of questionable legality.
• Troubled Production: According to several Starbreeze and Overkill developers, Overkill's The Walking Dead had massive troubles behind the scenes.
  • Development had begun on the Valhalla game engine Starbreeze had purchased in 2015, departing from the aging Diesel game engine previously used in PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2. Unfortunately, Valhalla was in a very early stage of development and in no shape to be used, lacking even a function to open files. Those who worked with Valhalla had nothing good to say about the engine, calling it "a piece of shit", "unworkable" and "an insane waste of money". Developers begged management to move the game to the proven Unreal game engine, which was finally granted after two years of development on Valhalla. The game was pushed back to 2018, but that only left the team a single year to build the game, many of whom had no prior experience working with Unreal.
  • Mismanagement plagued the game and the company at large. The release of RAID: World War II while Payday 2 was still receiving regular content updates, left many at Starbreeze confused as to why they were competing against their own game, which helped RAID drop to a mere 40 concurrent players within three months of release. Starbreeze was also spending money on ill-advised projects, with tens of millions dumped into failed Virtual Reality projects and on promotional crossovers with various Hollywood films.
  • On the game itself, producers would make wild demands for features based on the latest games they had seen, such as Far Cry and Dying Light, only to change their mind within weeks. The showcase at E3 2018 had management assuring the team that reactions to the game were glowingly positive, even as team members saw news and videos showing that actual impressions had been lukewarm at best. The team was forced to work up to 100 hours a week during the last months of development to get the game done by the deadline, severely affecting the mental and physical well-being of many working on the game. By the end of development, the team had been thoroughly disillusioned about the quality of the game.
  • When the game released in November 2018, it staggered out as an Obvious Beta that was panned for being riddled with glitches and various online issues, and others criticized the game's pacing and gunplay. Expected to sell millions of copies, it fell disastrously short of Starbreeze's expectations and Starbreeze's stock price went into freefall. The company would continue to be rocked by bad news throughout the year as the beginning of December saw Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson leave his post as the company announced it was filing for reconstruction. Two days later, Starbreeze would have their offices raided by police, who arrested at least one person and confiscated multiple computers on suspicion of insider trading. In February 2019, Starbreeze had the license to The Walking Dead ripped away, removing the game from digital storefronts and cancelling planned releases on the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Starbreeze came dangerously close to shutting its doors entirely, and would only regain stability after a year of restructuring, selling off most of its assets, and resuming active development for PAYDAY 2.

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