Image credit:Nacon

Greedfall and Steelrising developer Spiders look set to close their doors, according to a recent report

Greedfall's sequel launched last month

· Rock Paper Shotgun

It is, unfortunately, another one of those days. According to a report from French outlet Origami, weeks after launching Greedfall: The Dying World, developer Spiders are looking pretty set to close their doors (as a note, I've had to use machine translation for this one). This follows on from layoffs last year that affected a large number of staffers, and publisher Nacon failing to find a buyer for Spiders after they began filing for insolvency.

As of right now Nacon are going through an administrative procedure to put Spiders into judicial liquidation, a "simple formality at this stage," say sources that spoke with Origami. Worth noting here that Origami also point out that 67% of companies placed in judicial reorganisation result in being fully liquidated. Nacon had apparently been hoping to find a buyer before mid-April, but clearly this window has passed.

Spiders is a studio with a long history, having been first founded 19 years ago. They've typically focused on role-playing games, from the origin of the Styx series that is Of Orcs and Men, to 2016's The Technomancer, to more recent games like Steelrising and the pair of Greedfall games. Greedfall: The Dying World had only launched in March, and even received an update just yesterday, but doesn't seem to have made enough of an impact to save the studio from this insolvency process.

As noted and translated by Kotaku, French video game union Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo pinned blame on Nacon and its executives for the mismanagement of the studio, writing in a statement from March, "Their disdain for video game production and their incompetence actively sabotaged studios which were viable until their acquisition, and jeopardized projects with a high potential. The deterioration of working conditions in the last years, and the creation of new studios with the barely hidden goal of sabotaging existing ones, were already convoluted ways of reducing headcount and they only made matters worse."

Solidarity to those affected by the studio's closure.