Spiders’ liquidation has been ordered on April 29. In a few weeks, the studio will cease to exist. 71 workers will see their job, their career and their income slashed by Spiders’ and Nacon’s incompetence and malice.
Officially, the liquidation is caused by Spiders not making enough profit and the absence of takeover offer. In reality, it is the result of a deliberate process on Nacon’s part.
First-degree murder?
Since being bought in 2019, the studio was the victim of financial arrangements in which Nacon was, at the same time, Spiders’ owner, president and single client. The studio wasn’t getting any royalties on the games it made, and all its income and liquid assets were de facto seized by the group. In fact, Spiders was an empty shell, its role reduced to being a department inside Nacon, but organised in such a way that it could be taken out at the whim of Nacon’s executives.
This is exactly what is happening today. Last year, when Nacon abruptly canceled production on project Dark, unilaterally and without concrete explanations, it started a countdown for the studio, which did not have any contract ensuring its survival after the release of GreedFall 2.
Nacon refused to sign another contract right away, and kept pushing back the deadlines to sign a new one. It appears that the group also forbid Spiders from offering its services to other publishers or investors, blocking this way out of the crisis.
Even after it was put under judicial reorganisation, Nacon could have signed a contract with Spiders. The administrators confirmed that Nacon never expressed any intention to sign a contract to continue Spiders’ activity, and therefore that it never wished to save the company.
In general, the management at Spiders and Nacon managed the studio carelessly. They notably ignored the many alerts on the company’s economical situation, strategy and management made by worker representatives, who gave numerous negative reports during the yearly mandatory consultations
In our opinion, all of this shows that the liquidation is a premeditated and deliberate choice by Nacon’s management.
So much wasted
Spiders was founed in 2008, 18 years ago, and was one of the oldest video game studios in France. It released 7 original games, and worked on 4 others for other studios.
At the time of its liquidation, Spiders was working of the preproduction of a new original game, Mist. The workers really had faith in this project, and kept working on it even after Spiders was put under judicial reorganisation. Sadly, this game will never come out.
Workers at the studio already didn’t get anything beyond their salaries, which was paltry for many of them. Now, it will be impossible for them to receive even a cent from the studio’s games sales.
We refuse to see the group responsible for Spiders’ abrupt end pillaging the still-warm body of our jobs. Although we hope that our games will still be enjoyed, we would like players to avoid giving their money to Nacon, as it would reward the group for its actions.
Despite the industry’s deafening silence on the collapse of the second biggest video games employer in France, the fight will continue after Spiders’ death. We will do everything in our power to ensure Spiders’ and Nacon’s malice and mismanagement, which appear to be premeditated, from going unpunished.
We express our support towards:
- the workers at Spiders,
- the workers at other Nacon companies, as they haven’t yet endured all the consequences of Nacon’s reorganisation,
- all video game workers, as they are fighting tooth and nails against their bosses for the industry’s survival.
The fight continues ✊