Spiders (Steelrising, GreedFall) cannot find a buyer and faces closure

Nacon’s bankruptcy claims its first victim: Spiders, the French development team responsible for Steelrising, The Technomancer and GreedFall. According to Origami, no buyer has been found for the studio and the judicial administrator responsible for the restructuring of the company will request its liquidation this Wednesday.

Spiders is a team specialized in role-playing games with 18 years of history behind them. Since its founding in 2008, it has worked on AA projects published mostly by Focus Entertainment, including Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper (2009), Gray Matter (2010) and Of Orcs and Men (2012), a saga that gave life to the spin-off Styx developed by Cynide. The project that allowed Spiders to make the leap was Mars War Logs (2013). From here came some of the studio’s best-known games, including Bound by Flame (2014), The Technomancer (2016), GreedFall (2019) and Steelrising (2022).

Despite its close relationship with Focus Entertainment, in 2019 Spiders accepted a purchase offer from Bigben Interactive, the company we know today as Nacon. The latest Spiders game is GreedFall 2: The Dying World, which was released last March after passing early access. Just yesterday the title received patch 1.2 focused on correcting errors. Most of the games developed by Spiders use the Silk Engine, a proprietary engine that has evolved over the years.

Origami assures that in recent days the Spiders staff have dedicated their time to updating the CV, while the works council is organizing a market so that employees can purchase the equipment they have been using until now. It is very common that in this type of liquidation the staff of the closing company is allowed to purchase computer equipment and office supplies at a good discount. Spiders staff have not yet been formally dismissed, but the liquidation application to the commercial court that will be submitted tomorrow, Wednesday, is considered a mere formality.

Among Nacon’s properties we also have other studios such as Cyanide (Styx), Eko Software (Dragonkin: The Banished) and KT Racing (Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown). We will see what fate awaits these teams and Nacon’s intellectual property. Finding a buyer for the studios is really difficult since their greatest asset, the employees, can be hired by any other company once fired. Intellectual properties should attract more attention.