Spiders Studio Is Shutting Down After Nacon Fails to Find a Buyer

Spiders, the Paris-based studio behind cult RPGs GreedFall and Steelrising, is closing on April 29, 2026. The 18-year-old developer filed for liquidation in a Paris court after Nacon, its publisher and owner, failed to find a single buyer willing to take it on. All 75 employees are already looking for new jobs.

How it got here

The collapse traces back to February 2026, when Bigben Interactive — Nacon's majority shareholder — defaulted on a €43 million bond repayment after its banks refused to advance funds. Nacon entered insolvency proceedings, and several of its internal studios, including Spiders, Cyanide, and Kylotonn, filed alongside it in March. The French court gave Nacon an observation period under redressement judiciaire — a form of creditor protection lasting up to 18 months — but no viable continuation plan emerged for Spiders, and no outside buyer stepped in.

France's video game workers' union, STJV, didn't mince words. In a March statement, it blamed Nacon leadership for years of mismanagement, accusing executives of forcing AI adoption, cancelling projects, and effectively sabotaging studios that could have survived under better management. That framing is the union's, not a court finding — but the outcome speaks for itself.

The GreedFall problem

Spiders' last game didn't help. GreedFall 2: The Dying World left early access in March 2026 to poor reviews and thin player numbers — per Kotaku, the Steam peak barely crossed 1,000 concurrent players. The original GreedFall (2019) sold over two million copies and gave Spiders a genuine cult following, but the sequel launched in rough shape and couldn't convert that goodwill into numbers that justified continued publishing costs.

GreedFall 2 is still available on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S — but what happens to the game's ongoing support after April 29 is unclear. Nacon has 16 studios in total, and Spiders is the first confirmed liquidation. Cyanide, the studio behind the Styx stealth trilogy, is also flagged as commercially unviable and remains in receivership.

What it signals

Spiders' closure fits a pattern seen across European AA publishing. Studios like Daedalic and Piranha Bytes have faced similar pressure as mid-budget games struggle to compete in a market increasingly dominated by either blockbuster releases or cheap indie titles. When a publisher carries heavy debt and a niche RPG sequel underperforms, the studio — not the executives — pays the price.