Another day, another studio bites the dust. Spiders, the French developer behind some seriously underrated action-RPGs, is reportedly shutting down after their publisher Nacon couldn’t find anyone willing to buy them out. It’s giving major déjà vu vibes with all these closures lately.
“Spiders (Steelrising, GreedFall) is reported to close soon – Nacon is unable to find a buyer for the” – u/Turbostrider27 on r/pcgaming
This one hits different though. Spiders wasn’t some massive AAA machine churning out the same stuff every year. They were lowkey one of the few studios still making those mid-budget action-RPGs that felt like they had actual personality. Remember when games could just be good without needing a $200 million budget?
GreedFall dropped back in 2019 and was basically Dragon Age if BioWare still cared about making RPGs. Sure, it was janky in places. But it had that old-school charm where you could tell the devs actually gave a damn about their world-building. The colonial fantasy setting was genuinely interesting instead of just another medieval Europe clone.
Then came Steelrising in 2022. Picture this: French Revolution but with robots. Sounds unhinged? It absolutely was, in the best possible way. Playing as Aegis, this clockwork warrior trying to stop a robot apocalypse in 1789 Paris, was pure chaos. The combat felt weighty. The steampunk aesthetic actually worked. It wasn’t perfect but it was theirs.
Now both those franchises are probably dead in the water. Thanks, Nacon.
The gaming industry in 2026 is straight-up brutal. We’ve seen massive layoffs at Microsoft, Sony, and basically every major publisher. But it’s the smaller studios like Spiders that are really getting demolished. These are the teams that took risks on weird ideas because they couldn’t afford to play it safe.
Nacon clearly saw Spiders as dead weight. Can’t blame them from a business perspective – AA games are a tough sell when everyone wants either indie darlings or massive blockbusters. There’s no middle ground anymore. You either make Baldur’s Gate 3 or you make Pizza Tower. Anything in between gets crushed.
But here’s what pisses me off about this whole situation. Spiders was actually building something unique in the French gaming scene. While Ubisoft was busy turning every franchise into the same open-world checklist simulator, Spiders was out here making focused single-player experiences. They understood that not every game needs to be a live service or have battle passes.
The studio was known for their environmental storytelling. Walking through the districts of Steelrising’s Paris felt genuinely oppressive. You could feel the weight of history mixed with this weird sci-fi twist. GreedFall’s island of Teer Fradee wasn’t just a pretty backdrop – it was a character in the story.
That kind of craft doesn’t just appear overnight. It takes years of iteration and learning. Spiders had been grinding since 2008, slowly getting better with each release. Mars: War Logs was rough. Bound by Flame was better. The Technomancer was getting there. By GreedFall they’d found their groove.
Now all that institutional knowledge just evaporates. The artists, programmers, and designers will scatter to other studios or leave the industry entirely. Maybe some will start indie teams but realistically? Most will probably end up working on mobile games or corporate software.
French gaming is taking a massive L here too. The country has been trying to build a legitimate game development scene beyond just Ubisoft for decades. Spiders was proof it could work. They weren’t making Assassin’s Creed money but they were carving out their own niche.
What happens to GreedFall 2 now? The sequel was supposed to drop later this year. Maybe Nacon shops it around to other studios but honestly? Nobody else is going to understand what made the original special. They’ll probably just scrap it entirely.
Same goes for any potential Steelrising follow-up. That world had so much unexplored potential. Imagine a sequel set during the Industrial Revolution or World War 1. Robot warfare through different historical periods could’ve been their franchise.
Instead we get another reminder that the gaming industry doesn’t actually care about preserving creative voices. It’s all about quarterly numbers and maximizing shareholder value. Studios like Spiders are just collateral damage in the endless pursuit of growth.
For fans of their games, this is probably the end of an era. Those unique AA action-RPGs with heart and personality? They’re becoming extinct. Everything’s either massive budget spectacles or tiny indie projects. The middle tier is getting wiped out.
Keep an eye on where the Spiders developers end up. Some might land at other French studios like Arkane Lyon or Dontnod. Others could join the growing indie scene. But realistically, we’ll probably never see anything quite like GreedFall or Steelrising again.
RIP Spiders. You deserved better than this industry gave you.
