Don’t Nod, the developers that have made influential games such as Life Is Strange (2015), Life Is Strange 2 (2018-2019), and most recently Aphelion (2026) have been making headlines recently for something other than their work.
A letter released on October 27th of this year has been published by employees of Don’t Nod who are under the French game industry union Le Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo. Their statment has made headlines since its has been published for a number of reasons, all of which are quite disappointing.
The employees say the developing company is under a safeguard procedure–which is a procedure in which a company is able to freeze any debts they have in order to continue to work. This is set in place so a business can make money without the worry of “creditor enforcement” while doing so. While this is not inherently a negative procedure and can be beneficial for those in need, Don’t Nod kept this important detail from their employees, something they have an unfortunate habit of doing. Without a safeguard procedure set in place, “the company wouldn’t even have enough funds to get to the end of the PSE (redundancies plan).”
In December 2025, employees learned that the forecast for the company was uncertain. Management had announced the financial scenarios they could see themselves in: best case, two games would get funding, worst case (and their current circumstance) no funding is found and a liquidation would begin to take place.
At the same time, management summoned employee representatives (CSE) to speak about the safeguarding process, during which the CEO Oskar Guilbert reportedly pressured members of the CSE “to make them shorten the legally mandated delay and issue their opinion immediately.” Although the employees did not give in to the pressure, this did not stop management from moving forward with the safeguarding process. Understandably so, this upset the employees and they did not believe a kind word he said, “The CEO nished his address with empty remarks on how much attention was paid to employees, which everyone knows was bullshit and probably written by chatGPT.”
Moreover, the next project Don’t Nod is working on is not in the position to be finished with how many employees have been cut. The majority of employees were fired, for example, there are no animators, character artists, concept artists, and more. However, the jobs that were safe from cuts were the managerial positions. This has led to an unsavory realization for the employees that jobs were not being cut, but people were; it is worth nothing the targeting of people is illegal. This has led to anxiety that has severely effected the workplace:
For 2 years, employees have been living on the edge, in uncertainty and anxiety, all of it reinforced by internal comms that alternated between inexistance and outright lies. This impacted their health, as evidenced by the CSE who documented 6 workplace accidents in 2026 and recently had to launch an inquiry into a serious and imminent danger.
This and much more was written, to read more in depth you can find the letter here.