In serious difficulty, the French games publisher Nacon requests its placement in receivership

New blow for the video game industry in France: the publisher Nacon announced on Wednesday that it had suspended payments and requested its placement in receivership in the face of the financial difficulties of its parent company, BigBen Interactive.

“To date, the company reports available assets that do not allow it to meet its due liabilities,” explained the publisher of the games “Hell is Us” and “RoboCop: Rogue City” in a press release.

Based in Lesquin (North), the Nacon group brings together 16 development studios, including the French Spiders, Cyanide and Kylotonn, and has more than a thousand employees.

Questioned by AFP, Alain Falc, CEO of Nacon and BigBen Interactive, recognized “a debt problem” and mentioned restructuring, but he still said he was “confident”. “Maybe we’ll sell assets. Perhaps we will be forced to reduce the number of employees. We will try to preserve employment as much as possible, but I prefer studio sales rather than layoffs,” he explained.

“Disconnected and insufficient” management

For its part, the Union of Video Game Workers (STJV) hoped that this legal recovery would be “an opportunity to finally change the direction of the group to start again on healthy working bases”. “Staff representatives have been warning for years that the group and the studios are going to the wall,” added the union, denouncing “disconnected and insufficient” management by Nacon which “has had significant psychological consequences” for its employees.

In September 2024, several employees of the Spiders and Kylotonn studios went on strike to denounce their working conditions, expressing alarm at the risk of burnout and disorganization of schedules.

The difficulties of Nacon, the third French publisher after Ubisoft and Pullup, are linked to those of its parent company, BigBen Interactive, known for its accessories for video games. The latter announced on Wednesday that it was opening an amicable conciliation procedure in order to facilitate discussions with its financial creditors, even though it has been unable to repay a loan payment of around 43 million euros since February 19.

BigBen, which had obtained a refinancing agreement at the end of November, faced an “unexpected and late refusal from its banking pool” during February, the group explained, placing it in this difficult position.

The stock prices of BigBen and Nacon, suspended since February 20 following a 25% fall in the markets, will remain at a standstill until the decision of the Lille commercial court, the two companies announced. This is expected “at the beginning of March”, indicates Nacon. Over the last three years, their valuation has collapsed by almost 90%, falling for Nacon to around 28 million euros and for BigBen to 9 million euros.

Sector in decline

The French publisher, faced with sales considered disappointing on several titles in recent years, has just published “Styx: Blades of Greed” and is due to release “GreedFall 2” in the coming weeks.

Nacon’s difficulties are a new illustration of the poor health of the sector in France, already marked by the difficult financial situation of the giant Ubisoft.

This flagship, which alone employs between a quarter and a third of the French industry, launched a vast restructuring in January. It consists of a cost reduction plan of nearly 200 million euros over two years and a voluntary departure plan which could concern up to 200 people at its headquarters in Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne), or nearly 5% of its workforce in France.

These announcements were followed by a three-day strike which mobilized several hundred employees in France and abroad.

Booming during the Covid years, the video game sector, which will hold its annual awards ceremony, the Pégases, next week in France, has been going through a period of decline around the world for almost two years, marked by waves of layoffs and studio closures.