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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

We are hosting this open letter from worker representatives at Nacon companies adressed to the group’s upper management.

Following BigBen Interactive’s announcement of its inability to repay its bond loan, the Nacon group filed for insolvency and asked the Lille commercial court to open judicial reorganisation proceedings. The hearing took place on March 2, 2026. It confirmed the opening of judicial reorganisation proceedings and appointed the judicial administrators.

Nacon said it consulted its worker representatives and appears to have made declarations to its direct employees, but hasn’t made any group-wide announcements. We heard of the hearing only after it took place, at the same time as the general public. Nacon’s subsidiaries have been sidelined, with no information, their workers having to make do with declarations from executives who are themselves kept in the dark, and from releases targeting financial markets.

Unable to communicate directly with Nacon, we fear that its subsidiaries will not be included in the judicial reorganisation, and/or will not be consulted to draft the continuation plan.

We want to point out that the Nacon group employs more than 900 workers in 6 countries. It is the second biggest employer in the French video game industry. Its judicial reorganisation is a major crisis in our industry, and it should be treated as one.

As the jobs of almost a thousand workers and the existence of the group’s subsidiaries are at stake, this silence is intolerable and beyond understanding. We consider it incompatible with the respect owed toward the workers making its games.

We demand from Nacon :

• Detailed explanations on
  • the circumstances that led to this judicial reorganisation,
  • how it took into consideration the alerts raised by its subsidiaries’ worker representatives in the last few years or, if they were not, for what reasons,
  • what is planned in the short and medium term, in particular what has been presented to the court, and what has been or will be presented to the judicial administrators.
• The handover, to the upper management and worker representatives of all its subsidiaries everywhere in the world
  • of the information presented during the consultation of Nacon’s worker representatives,
  • of the Lille commercial court’s decision.
• The inclusion and consultation of its subsidiaries’ management and worker representatives all along the coming observation period, and in the drafting of the continuation plan.

We demand that all of the subsidiaries’ worker representatives, from all over the world, be gathered by Nacon as soon as possible both online and in its offices in Lesquin.

We are staying at the disposal of the appointed judicial administrators, to help them fill their mission to save jobs as well as possible.

We are also asking for help from elected officials, in particular local officials in the municipalities and constituencies where jobs and economic activity are at risk.

If you are a worker representative or a regular worker at a Nacon company, and would like to share information and/or be updated about the proceedings, please contact the group’s union sections.

Signatories, in alphabetical order :

• Big Bad Wolf Studio workers’ council
• Cyanide workers’ council
• Eko Software workers’ council
• Kylotonn workers’ council
• Passtech Games workers’ council
• Spiders workers’ council
• Big Bad Wolf Studio STJV union section
• Kylotonn CGT union section
• Kylotonn STJV union section
• Passtech Games STJV union section
• Spiders STJV union section

In August 2023, at least 6 workers at Ishtar Games (a studio belonging the Nacon group) were offered voluntary termination of their job. As the company was offering severance packages below the pay of a standard advance notice, 3 of these workers refused. A few weeks later, they were fired for « professional incompetence ».

With the STJV’s help, they took their case to the labour court, which gave its verdict last January. The court found that the 3 dismissals were without real cause, and therefore illegal. The company was sentenced to pay damages up to 7000 € for each case, approximately 25 000 € total, and to refund a month of unemployment benefits to the state.

Seeing this result, the STJV considers that the workers were right to stand up to the pressure of « voluntary » termination, as they now benefit from 3 months of advance notice pay (instead of 5 weeks), dismissal compensation, unemployment benefits due from the employer being paid back and damages for the harm they suffered.

The company did not appeal the verdict, meaning its conviction is final.

We are proud of this victory : company authoritarianism is over. A union and union dues allow us to defend ourselves, to defend others, and to win.

The anonymised verdicts (in French) are available below.

Game workers everywhere have many problems in common. Our jobs are under threat, we are denied a voice in our workplaces, and policies such as ‘return to office’ and tools like generative AI are being forced upon us, even though they degrade our working conditions.

We demand equity for all and stable careers; free from layoffs, free from the imposition of automated content creation, and free from authoritarian mismanagement.

Multinational companies already operate globally. Game workers already collaborate transnationally. It follows, then, that unions must also organise across borders.

Our unions met in Paris last month. Together, we protested in support of fellow workers fired by Rockstar Games for exercising their legal right to unionise. We shared knowledge, talked about strategies and techniques, and discussed solutions to the challenges we share. More importantly, our working group set out concrete actions for the near future.

From these meetings, one thing became absolutely clear: that together, workers can transform their jobs, their careers, and their lives for the better.

We can do something, and we will.

We vow to increase cooperation between our unions in both the short and long term, and to stay united in front of all that’s going on in our industry and the world.

Organise and fight for your rights!
Coordinadora Sindical del Videojuego – CGT (Spain)
FIOM-CGIL Milan Work Council (Italy)
ver‧di Game Devs Roundtable (Germany)
Game Workers Unite Ireland – FSU (Ireland)
IWGB Game Workers (United Kingdom)
Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (France)

The STJV relays this message from ex-Starbreeze Paris employees, and is in full support of their demands.

On January 10th 2025, Starbreeze Management announced to all 23 employees of its french subsidiary Starbreeze Paris the start of a procedure aiming at closing this entity and laying off all of its staff. All of these workers were assigned to the studio’s games projects such as Payday2, Payday3, and the more recent project Baxter, just like Starbreeze employees in Stockholm.

This cessation of activity only exists in theory, as the swedish parent company is recreating similar positions in Stockholm. Starbreeze is comfortable with this strategy, and even proudly claimed in its Q4 2024 shareholders-aimed report that closing foreign subsidiaries will optimize the group’s market value. This decision was unilateral, discussions with Starbreeze Paris staff representatives were strictly limited to presenting a plan that was not up for discussion.

This decision is a dubious strategic move, losing the most technically competent personnel with years of expertise and accumulated company knowledge is hardly viable.
This decision shows total disrespect towards the affected employees that see their career come to a brutal halt : absolutely no compensation other than the bare legal minimum was offered, and management even refused to pay for arrears of employee expenses linked to the use of their personal space in an all-remote company.
This decision is illegal : the parent company Starbreeze AB, being the real employer of all 23 dismissed workers, did not stop any activity and shows culpable carelessness as it cannot justify the layoffs by anything else than aiming at lowering personnel cost to increase its profitability.

This kind of action has sadly become more frequent within the big companies of the video game industry, forgoing all respect towards those who create and build the games.

Ex-employees of Starbreeze Paris do not accept this state of affairs and in consequence have united and filed 17 complaints with the competent court in order to overturn these abusive layoffs.

With this example, we want to establish that the video game industry does not exist above the law. We strongly encourage other workers in the field to organize and fight for their rights in order to end this kind of practice.