Following the start of Nacon’s judicial reorganisation on March 3rd, video game production studios Kylotonn, Cyanide and Spiders, as well as the motion capture studio Nacon Tech also asked, on Monday March 23rd 2026, to be put under judicial reorganisation. The timing of BigBen’s and Nacon’s announcements raises questions.
In the short term, and since they would be unable to pay salaries, judicial reorganisation proceedings could help these studios avoid liquidation at the end of March. But these announcements are tragic, not only for the workers who risk losing their jobs, but also for the whole industry as Nacon is the second biggest video games employer in France.
It is sadly the expected outcome of Nacon’s total lack of strategy and of its financial policies, which involve being permanently on the verge of bankruptcy. With massive investments in video games, through the acquisition of studios, Nacon and its upper management sought to make a quick buck, with no long term strategy for these studios, their projects and their teams.
Their disdain for video game production and their incompetence actively sabotaged studios which were viable until their acquisition, and jeopardised projects with a high potential. Years of mismanagement and strategic nothingness, both at the group and company levels, have blocked studios from modernising, organising and developing themselves. Today, even after completely emptying its studios coffers – dozens of million euros which should have ensured ensured studio stability and safe jobs ! – Nacon comes out with a deficit.
Makeshit solutions like canceling all recruitments and raises for more than a year, or snake oil solutions like “AI”, which Nacon is gradually forcing on its studios without even knowing what for, will not save money and clean up the company accounts. The deterioration of working conditions in the last years, and the creation of new studios with the barely hidden goal of sabotaging existing ones, were already convoluted ways of reducing headcount and they only made matters worse.
Nacon as a group will only be able to survive by completely changing its executives, and by structuring itself to end the non-stop turnover and lack of resources for the editorial and marketing departments. We cannot let the people responsible for the current situation run us into a wall without suffering the consequences.
Nacon’s bad reputation has greatly tarnished its studios’. There is much work to be done to restore their fame and make them viable again. But it is possible, and it is what workers want.
Solutions to Nacon’s problems exist, and workers have already made them known publicly and to the studios’ management. Among those are :
- Streamlining and improving working conditions, processes and tools in the group, and building an actual editorial and industrial strategy.
- Defining and setting up a labour policy – there are none currently – and improving the working conditions which have a disastrous impact on workers’ morale and therefore on productivity.
- Training executives, managers and employees, with actual training programs instead of phoney ones akin to Buzzfeed quizzes or “YouTube tutorials”, to ensure the stability of skills and studios’ competitiveness.
- Actually fighting to reduce turnover at all levels of the group, as it prevents any skills buildup and consolidation.
- Fighting against the rampant harassment which is hurting workers and multiplying sick leaves, reducing productivity just as much in the group and its studios.
- Developing actual democracy at work, by involving workers directly in decision processes. Workers already have solutions to the existing problems, and are only asking to implement them.
Despite years of ordeal, workers at our studios still want to make games, and to make them better. They extend their hand to anyone with the means and will to turn the situation around. They make themselves available to the relevant authorities to ensure the studios’ existence, to save jobs and to fix the problems caused by their management.
The STJV sections at Kylotonn, Spiders and Big Bad Wolf Studio, with the support of the STJV section at Passtech Games