Nacon schedules May showcase despite insolvency — but Spiders studio is already gone

French games publisher Nacon is holding its annual showcase on May 7 at 8pm CEST — even as the company works through a court-supervised insolvency process. Parent company Bigben Interactive failed to repay a €43 million bond in February 2026, triggering a legal restructuring that has already claimed one studio. For anyone who buys Nacon games or uses its controllers, the question is whether the lights stay on.

The showcase

Nacon published a teaser confirming Nacon Connect 2026 for May 7, with the event streamed online. The company says to expect DLC announcements for existing games alongside reveals of new titles and PC and console peripherals. The original date was March 4; the event was pushed back once restructuring began but never cancelled — a deliberate signal from management that the company is still operating.

The cost so far

Spiders, the Paris-based studio behind GreedFall and Steelrising, was liquidated on April 29 — just eight days before the showcase. All 75 employees lost their jobs, ending 18 years of the studio's history. The timing is stark: Nacon Connect is now going ahead without one of its most recognisable development teams.

The player numbers tell part of the story. GreedFall: The Dying World, Spiders' most recent release, peaked at roughly 1,000 concurrent players at launch — compared to around 16,000 for the original GreedFall. That kind of commercial drop makes a studio difficult to defend when a publisher is cutting costs under court supervision.

Spiders is not the only casualty. Nacon's studios Cyanide and Kylotonn have also filed for court protection as part of the wider restructuring. Nacon controls 16 studios in total, per WccfTech, and the fate of the remaining teams depends on what the restructuring process produces.

What comes next

Nacon's decision to hold a public showcase mid-insolvency is unusual. Most publishers in financial difficulty go quiet. The May 7 event is either a genuine sign that operations are stabilising — or a last push to demonstrate viability to creditors and potential buyers. Either way, the show goes on, and what gets announced will say a lot about how much of Nacon actually remains, as Gagadget notes in its coverage of the Spiders closure.