French developer, publisher, and gaming hardware manufacturer Nacon appears to be in dire straits, as what was an evolving financial crisis at the company and its parent has rapidly escalated today.
Both Big Ben Interactive, which owns most of Nacon through shares and voting rights, and Nacon itself have separately filed documents at the local Commercial Court declaring financial difficulties, while trading in the shares of both companies is suspended at the Euronext bourse.
It’s a bit of a tangled web — as financial matters so often are — but ultimately the issue boils down to the fact that Nacon currently cannot pay its debts with its creditors as its assets and income don’t cover the shortfall.
As majority owner, Big Ben would ordinarily step in but the company stated an “unexpected and late refusal by its banking pool” to allow access to advance funds under existing agreements to exchange bonds for ordinary shares in Nacon. Notably, Big Ben’s largest single asset is its stake in Nacon; given Nacon’s troubles, it can’t be that unexpected that banks won’t lend money to Big Ben to shore up its principle asset as there’d be virtually nothing to collect on if it goes under.
The two filings are a little different in nature. Big Ben’s is a request to the president of the Lille metropolitan Commercial Court for the opening of a “conciliation procedure”. If ruled upon in Big Ben’s favor, this essentially brings the company and its banking creditors to the table to agree upon a restructuring of its debt — which relates to bonds. Suppliers, employees, and customers are fundamentally unaffected at this point.
Nacon’s filing is for insolvency procedures which, although obviously a good deal more significant, doesn’t have major consequences just yet. In essence “insolvency” means that what it currently owns in terms of assets are insufficient to cover its debts, and the filing includes a request to open what the French legal system terms “judicial reorganisation proceedings”.
This will see the court oversee a financial restructuring that renegotiate its debt with its creditors, with the goal of protecting the company’s employees and allowing the business to continue. However it does require the court to rule on the request, which is expected to be in early March.
Nacon of course has its fingers in a lot of racing pies right now, and was expected to announce a whole lot more in a Nacon Connect event on March 4 — though whether this will even go ahead now is a matter of speculation — and that does mean that quite a lot is at risk.
An obvious one is Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, and this title is having a few fingers pointed at it as a contributor to the current state of affairs. It was a major undertaking for Nacon and after suffering several delays still launched in an almost literally unplayable state; we liked the scope of what we saw, but it was technically poor and virtually inaccessible due to the servers not being able to cope.
Although Nacon has done a lot of work since, fixing a lot of bugs and issues, improving optimization (especially on consoles), and bringing promised features as well as providing roadmaps for more, the title isn’t doing well in terms of concurrent online players. You’ll likely still find most grids in most races are filled by AI instead of other humans due to the shortage of actual people playing it.
That aside, Nacon has two titles in the works that we’d been looking forward to. It had reacquired the WRC license from EA, with the first game due in 2027, while Endurance Motorsport Series is an entirely new take on the world of top-level, long-distance track racing.
There’s hardware too, from its Revosim brand. We’d been suitably impressed with the first bundle, the RS Pure Direct Drive wheel, while PlayStation support and a new entry-level “Initiale” wheel were on the slate for 2026.
Currently, the future of all of these products, as well as titles beyond the racing sphere from the 25 subsidiaries, and more than 1,000 employees are in danger pending the ruling from the court and the outcome of any restructuring.
See more articles on Endurance Motorsport Series, Nacon, Revosim, and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown.
