We helped a former worker at Mi-Clos (a studio liquidated in 2024) who complained about sexual and sexist harassment from her manager, and who was forced to formally record the breach of her contract to protect herself. She chose to present her case before the labour court.

The plaintiff mentioned repeated sexual remarks (remarks on her appearance, invitations to chat “out of the office”, insistent demands to obtain her personal phone number, offers to take items directly out of her own pockets…). Despite an alert to worker representatives, followed by a “warning”, the acts didn’t stop.

Even worse, the plaintiff suffered retaliations. Despite another alert to worker representatives, to the labour inspection and to occupational medecine, the company didn’t take any other measures to put an end to the harassment.

Streetpress talked about this case in more details in 2024 (in French) : Au studio de jeux vidéo Mi-Clos, l’ambiance sexiste et les incohérences de production épuisent | StreetPress

Last September, the Créteil labour court sentenced the company to:

• 3750 € in damages as compensation for the sexual harassment and sexist behaviour from her creative director,
• 3750 € in damages as compensation for violating its duty to assess and prevent psycho-social risks, and its safety obligations,
• The reclassification of the breach of contract as an illegal firing with 11250 € in advance notice, 1125 € for holidays not taken, and 937 € for severance pay,
• 22 500 € in damages for illegally firing the plaintiff.

Since the liquidator did not appeal the decision, the sentence is final.

Michael Peiffert, president of the company at the time of the incidents, took the liberty to rant in his right to reply to the Streetpress article :

“One person, Emilie sensing trouble, as she said herself, is making statements against another employee to ask 50 000 € from the company. The company liquidation didn’t allow to check for the truth behind her remarks to go beyond the warning, but also and mostly made her hope for gains more than hypothetical.”

In the meantime, the veracity of the events has been check by the justice system: Emilie did not act out of opportunism, and Mi-Clos was permanently found guilty and sentenced to pay more than 43000 € to the plaintiff.

Despite companies’ pink-washing, gender discrimination and sexual harassment are still commonplace at work, and directly contribute to a lack of diversity. This case is a perfect example: the victim later decided to quit the video game industry entirely.

But nothing is set in stone. We will keep on pursuing heads of companies and perpetrators to make them answer for their acts in front of a court.

If you are a victim and need help, feel free to contact our union.

We recommend to everyone to read our guides, especially the one on self-defence in the workplace.

Today, Wednesday May 6th 2026, the first meeting to inform worker representatives of violent and massive layoffs at Kylotonn, following Nacon’s will, should have been held. This meeting was postponed at the last minute to May 13th, probably to try to save the “Nacon Connect” on May 7th, the group’s “big” marketing event. Once more, Nacon is unable to anticipate and changes its plans at the last minute. But we don’t.

Today’s situation follows years of warnings on the company’s financial situation, on the denial of democracy imposed on workers and their representatives, on the disorganised productions led by what we consider incompetent people, and on the catastrophic working conditions which damaged our health. As can be seen in our previous communications, in 2023, 2024 and 2026.

But we held on, and found the strength to fight despite:

• the commercial arrangements, some of those we think are more like shady schemes, which emptied Nacon’s subsidiaries coffers, creating the domino effect leading to judicial reorganisation proceedings,
• the company structures designed to silence us,
• the embezzlement, some proven others suspected, by Kylotonn executives,
• the insults, Kylotonn executives going as far as calling us “piss-stinking”,
• the removal – on Nacon’s orders – of all dialogue lines referring to homosexual relationships in Test Drive Unlimited, to avoid an imaginary “review bombing”,
• the harassment and discrimination causing work-related illnesses,
• the random demands from Nacon’s executives, that we think is pur sabotage of our productions, made without doing market research or asking the studios’ opinion – for instance making us do a large open world on a game engine designed for limited levels, without financing the development costs of said engine, and despite the workers lacking experience on this genre,
• the multiple interferences to worker representation…

But now, thanks to the management at Kylotonn which we find servile and indulgent, Nacon can finally make its dream of slashing the jobs it deems unnecessary a reality. Kylotonn’s workforce and skills were already partially looted after the creation of Grit Games, a studio even more integrated in Nacon, which picked up the WRC licence. It appears that Grit Games hand picked its employees, being careful to avoid recruiting union members, women and gender minorities.

Among its goals for Kylotonn’s judicial reorganisation, Nacon states, without batting an eye, that it does not want to give new productions to Kylotonn anymore, for an indeterminate amount of time. It only wants to keep a skeleton crew to keep squeezing Test Drive Unlimited through aggressive monetisation. After the cancellation of a promising project in preproduction, with no possibility to look for other publishers or investors, the setup is complete. The only thing left to do is the dirty work: firing all the “surplus” workers like trash.

Anger in top gear

Nacon’s silence on the ongoing events is telling. We believe it is a series of premeditated events, to make workers pay for the audacity of organising themselves, fighting for better working conditions, trying to make production processes more democratic and more efficient. This is just the prolongation of the silence we’ve been enduring for years.

However, the workers at Kylotonn, true to their commitment over the last years both inside and outside the company, will not back down.

We are calling for an open-ended strike starting today, Wednesday May 6th 2026, at least until Monday May 11th, to protest against the vile reorganisation we are subjected to, and which would leave Nacon emerging unscathed, without giving us what we’re owed. Pursuing the production of Endurance Motorsport Series (EMS) and Test Drive Unlimited (TDU) as if nothing was happening would be allowing Nacon to sell games made and refined by the very same workers it wants to fire violently and ungratefully, through abject layoffs using the judicial reorganisation proceedings to silence us. Our only mean to efficiently protest, to force them to come to the negotiating table and take us seriously, is to attack their finances by slowing down production and affecting the release dates. Our strike will be renewed as long as needed.

We demand:

• that all layoffs be cancelled as long as there is no solid plan to ensure the company’s future,
• the reactivation of the unannounced project, and its presentation to other publishers and investors,
• the transition of all workers to the Engineers & Professionals status to increase their rights and protection against these shameful acts,
• the contractual revision of the links between Kylotonn and Nacon, to put an end to the power of life and death the group has on our lives and work.

To use an expression from our comrades at Spiders, you will not pillage the fruit of our labour on the still warm corpses of our jobs.

We call on everyone supporting us, as well as all the players who will understand with this press release that Nacon is the sole decision-maker on everything they complain about, to donate to the strike fund setup for the occasion. We also call on the solidarity of our sister companies and contractors’ workers: the balance of power will shift with our combined efforts.

We extend our solidarity to our comrades at Spiders and Nacon Tech, spinelessly liquidated and whose work will keep on making money for Nacon, and to our comrades at Cyanide and Big Bad Wolf who are waiting to learn their fate.

Picket lines will be held on Thursday May 7th at 10am, in front of our offices in Paris and Lyon. We are calling on everyone to meet us at the 33 rue Maurice Flandrin in Lyon, and 96 rue Orfila in Paris. Worker representatives will take the floor at 11:30.

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 what we consider incompetence and malice on Spiders’ and Nacon’s part .

Officially, the liquidation is caused by Spiders not making enough profit and the absence of takeover offer. In reality, it appears to us that 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 after GreedFall, 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 buying the Spiders games published by Nacon: Steelrising and Greedfall: The Dying World. It would reward the group for its actions. We would rather have players get our games through other means, by buying pre-owned games or through other ways.

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 ✊

03/04/2026 Update : The hearings for Cyanide, Kylotonn, Nacon Tech and Spiders’ judicial reorganisation took place on Monday, March 30th 2026 at the Lille commercial court. All 4 hearings were held back-to-back, and had the same – expected – result for the 4 companies : they were put under judicial reorganisation, with the same administrators as Nacon. As the hearings were held in camera, the attending worker representatives cannot disclose the content of the debates. They lament this state of affair, considering the despicable positions defended by Alain Falc during the hearings. However, they note that the court was receptive to the worker representatives’ arguments.

27/03/2026 Update : Before the opening of Spiders’ judicial reorganisation proceedings – which will be judged on Monday March 30th alongside Kylotonn, Cyanide and Nacon Tech – Nacon has published an ad to seek a buyer for Spiders. We wish for all workers at the studio to be bought back without redundancies, and a future far from Nacon’s mismanagement.

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