French studio Don’t Nod have laid off workers across multiple departments. The full number is unconfirmed, but multiple affected staff have posted about their departures on LinkedIn, including Lost Records: Bloom & Rage principal cinematic artist Mary Pouliot, technical artist Laurent Dufrense, and QA lead Sandra Cormier.
It’s been a rocky year or so for Don’t Nod’s staff. Last September, the studio paused two unannounced games and said they’re altering others, also unannounced, to be more appealing to a “wider audience”, following warnings about an 11% decline in operating revenue for the first half of 2024. Chairman and CEO Oskar Guilbert attributed this to (the excellent) Jusant and Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden performing “well below expectations” commercially.
Back in February of the same year, French union STJV alleged mismanagement at Don’t Nod, including “contradictory” directions, shifting deadlines, and “no long-term vision” for staff welfare (cheers, Eurogamer). Following September’s statements from Guilbert, the STJV published another statement of their own, accusing Don’t Nod of creating “an atmosphere of extreme violence” with planned layoffs and mistreatment of staff.
(I figure it’s worth nothing here, re: the perhaps contentious use of the term “violence” that a.) French works differently to English and b.) the damage caused by extreme stress brought about from job precarity can obviously be genuinely physically harmful. Living under the protective shroud of being one degree of removal and deniability from the most literal definition of violence is how some of the worst people on the planet continue to be allowed to show their horrible little faces in public, after all.)
Sorry about that, had brief commie flush. Must be the weather. Ahem. “Jusant’s developers were left in the dark about their future, many without any work to do, for over 2 months”, said the STJV at the time, saying that around 29% of the Paris studio’s workforce could be at risk of losing their jobs. This coincided with another statement from Guilbert saying Don’t Nod would be undergoing a “reorganisation project”. Via an IGN report, Don’t Nod announced they were expecting to lay off employees at this time.
The numbers get a little bit hard to track from that point. In a strategy document from April of this year, Don’t Nod said that “ultimately, 59 job cuts are planned, including 12 departures that have not been replaced since the announcement”. Last month, STJV announced that they’d “secured 23 voluntary redundancies for job categories not threatened by the plan, in order to save as many colleagues from being fired”, as well as securing severance and strike pay. “Instead of the 69 layoffs initially planned, there were 46 voluntary departures and 1 layoff,” STJV write (Thanks, Gameranx).
Which brings us to the current round of layoffs. The STJV have yet to comment publicly. I’ve reached out to them, as well as Don’t Nod to confirm the number of layoffs at the studio, and I’ll update this if and when I know. Best of luck to all affected. Again, Jusant was bloody brilliant.
