In light of Nacon—the publisher for games like GreedFall: The Dying World and Styx: Blades of Greed—having filed for insolvency back in February, it looks like studios under the company are facing similar troubles. According to French publication Origami, Cyanide Studios, Spiders, and Klyotonn have also become part of the publisher’s court-ordered restructuring, and as a result, have paused any payments they owe to their employees. Due to this, around an estimated 320 game developers have been impacted.
Nacon’s original filing came due to majority shareholder Bigben Interactive not being able to make a partial repayment of its bond loan to bondholders. The shareholder laid the blame on an “unexpected and late refusal” by its banking pool, which in turn has also affected its own operations. Nacon has requested a “rapid implementation of financial restructuring” in order to survive. Previous considerations of debt restructuring under court supervision fell by the wayside due to the company simply not having enough available assets that could be sold to pay off its debts in time.
The insolvency filing involved the company requesting a judicial reorganization to assess potential solutions that could lead to Nacon’s survival “under the best possible conditions.” This means protecting its employees, preserving jobs, and renegotiations with creditors. The hearing took place earlier this month.
The publisher had also decided to push back its planned Nacon Connect showcase, which was originally slated for March 4th. Citing “difficult economic environment,” the company has postponed the event to May so that the company can “ensure that our future announcements have the impact they deserve.”
“Faced with a difficult economic environment for the company, we are choosing to focus our resources on upcoming releases and the development of our current games. This period will allow us to polish our projects and prepare for a new Nacon Connect to be held in May, which will showcase the work of our studios in the best possible way,” said the studio in its announcement.
The event was going to feature gameplay from a pair of cosmic horror titles: Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss and The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu. Along with this, a new action RPG dubbed Edge of Memories, as well as a new entry in the Endurance Motorsport Series by KT Racing were also going to be part of the show.
The most recent release by the publisher was GreedFall: The Dying World earlier this month. The title spent quite a bit of time in Early Access on PC before its eventual 1.0 release, which also coincided with the RPG making its way to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, take look at our review.
Earlier this month, Nacon, along with developer ACE Team, had also announced that co-op horror title The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is making its way to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on July 15th. This announcement came alongside a new trailer, which showcased quite a bit of gameplay as well as some of the title’s spookier elements, like hallucinations that players can suffer from.