Video game publisher Nacon has filed for insolvency. As part of the process, the trading of its shares on the Euronext Paris markets has been suspended, with the share prices it announced on February 20th being in effect. The reason for this filing, according to the press release, comes down to majority shareholder Bigben Interactive being unable to make a partial repayment of its bond loan to its bondholders. This came about from an “unexpected and late refusal” by Bigben’s banking pool, and has also had a major impact on its own operations.
To survive, Nacon is in need of a “rapid implementation of a financial restructuring”. While the company had considered going through a restructuring of its debt under the supervision of the courts, it has come to the conclusion that it does not have enough available assets that would allow it to pay off its debts in a timely manner.
With the insolvency filing, the company is now requesting judicial reorganization proceedings in an attempt to assess possible solutions to try and ensure Nacon’s survival “under the best possible conditions,” which includes protecting its employees, preserving jobs, and renegotiating with creditors. The hearing for this is slated to take place in early March.
It is worth noting that Nacon has many studios under its belt, including GreedFall: The Dying World developer Spiders, and Daedalic Entertainment, which was responsible for 2023’s The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.
While Nacon has had a hand in publishing several video games, more recent times have been quite tough for the publisher. Over the last few years, quite a few poorly-received games were released by the company, including the aforementioned Gollum, and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. However, there have also been plenty of positively-received ones, like 2024’s Ravenswatch.
While Nacon as an entity only came about as part of a move to merge Bigben Group and Bigben Interactive back in 2020, the company is actually quite older, having existed in some form or another as far back as the 1980s. In the last few years, the company was also known for getting into a legal scuffle with developer Frogwares over the release of first-person horror adventure game The Sinking City. Nacon has also acquired several studios, including Neopica, Midgar Studio, Ishtar Games, and Big Ant Studios, among others.
Its most recent outing has been the Cyanide-developed Styx: Blades of Greed, which came out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this month. The title once more features the titular goblin assassin on a brand new adventure to get his hands on as much Quartz as he can find. For more details, check out our review, where we gave the stealth action adventure game a score of 7 out of 10, praising its story and level design while finding flaws in enemy AI logic and a lack of upgrades in the early game.
Also check out our interview with the series creator and game director Julien Desourteaux, where we spoke about us about Styx: Blades of Greed‘s story, the overarching lore, its gameplay evolution, and other subjects.
