Nacon Publisher Financial Crisis Escalates With Big Bad Wolf Studio Closure and Seventy Five Percent Staff Cuts at the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Studio
As Nacon's serious lack of finance begins to escalate it is continuing to have very aggressive studio closures. According to report from Gautier Andres The publisher has now closed down Big Bad Wolf, which is now the second of its studios to be shut down following the Spiders development house who are behind games like Greedfall. Big Bad Wolf had produced a number of narrative driven role playing adventure games such as The Council, and Vampire The Masquerade Swansong, alongside a more recent Cthulhu The Cosmic Abyss.
However, its titles received very middling review scores from critics, and had moderate reception with consumers too. Crucially, sales of its games were simply not meeting the higher benchmarks of sales necessary to keep a studio afloat during Nacon's current dire financial situation. The closure of this studio now looks like one element of Nacon cutting costs and shedding its weaker assets from its books, and these consolidation actions have impacted its other studios as well.
However it isn't just the complete shutdown of Big Bad Wolf but also a major reduction in staff is planned for the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown studio. Despite its own technical problems and difficult launch, and following the report data from Andres the publisher has plans to reduce staff by 75 percent, so the current workforce will go from 120 employees down to 30. However this small team will continue development of the Test Drive project while the rest are laid off.
These layoffs show the extent of Nacon's problems; none of its long development projects are reaping reward and its strategy now appears to be far more cautious and with less emphasis placed on many mid size studios, but rather its own biggest and best IPs. For all of the employees laid off at both the Test Drive studio 90 workers and in their entirety at the Big Bad Wolf studio, the future currently appears unknown.
