Industry

Life is Strange studio Don't Nod plans to cut up to 85 of its 140 French jobs, and its union says management is targeting people one by one

By PPRGaming · October 27, 2026

Max Caulfield from Life is Strange reaching her hand toward the camera, with a blurred sunset behind her
Image: Square Enix / Don't Nod

One of France’s best-known studios is in serious trouble. Don’t Nod, the team behind Life is Strange, Vampyr and Jusant, is now under safeguard proceedings, a French court process that freezes old debts while a company looks for money. The Paris Business Court approved it on October 19, and Don’t Nod announced it with its half-year results the next day.

The numbers are grim. Revenue for the first half of 2026 fell 14% to €6.1 million, and the operating loss more than doubled to €4.3 million. Cash dropped from €15.5 million at the end of 2025 to €9.9 million at the end of June. Don’t Nod has warned that it’s uncertain it can keep operating beyond January 31, 2027 without new deals or funding, as Hitmarker reports. Its restructuring plan narrows the Paris studio to a single game in production and could cut up to 85 jobs in France. The Montreal studio isn’t affected.

Today, the union hit back. In a statement published October 27, the Don’t Nod section of the STJV, France’s video game workers’ union, said management had a liquidation scenario on the table as far back as December 2025 and waited months to act. According to Frandroid’s breakdown of the union’s figures:

  • The plan would remove up to 85 of about 140 French jobs, roughly six in ten.
  • Almost every non-manager role is hit, including all 6 animators, 18 of 22 programmers, and all character and concept artists.
  • Don’t Nod split its 140 staff into 47 job categories, 23 of them with a single person. The union says that lets management choose exactly who leaves, which French law doesn’t allow.
  • The cuts land mostly on the team making the studio’s next game, known as P14, which management plans to finish with team leads and outsourced work.

The union also says management refused a voluntary departure plan and a deal to cut executive pay.

PPR take: Life is Strange shaped a whole genre of story games, so watching the studio behind it fight for survival is rough. Cutting most of the people who actually make the game, then outsourcing the rest, is a risky way to finish P14. We hope the developers land somewhere good.

Sources