Don’t Nod is losing one of their top management figures as the company faces workplace allegations.
As reported by Insider Gaming, Deputy GM Benoît Gisbert Mora has announced what appears to be an amicable exit from the company. Mora claims that he was leaving to pursue new professional projects. For his part, Don’t Nod Chairman and CEO Oskar Guilbert affirmed his “total confidence in his Management Committee to carry out the Group’s exciting projects in 2024 and beyond”.
The SJTV, the French union who led the expose on Ubisoft’s workplace practices, also played whistleblower for the issues at Don’t Nod. To be clear, there are no claims of misconduct from any employees with high positions at the studio. However, they did point to the sudden deadline changes, the movement in employees to different divisions, and the inconsistent direction across their projects, as indications of problems at the company behind the scenes.
It’s a surprising revelation for the studio, and not just because of Don’t Nod’s glowing reputation. The studio is well known for a solid string of projects, from Life Is Strange 1 & 2, Vampyr, and more recent critical highlights like Jusant and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. As far as we know,
For now, we don’t know if Mora is part of these allegations from SJTV. But it may be pointing to bad news coming from a different, yet more difficult position. We knock on wood and truly hope we are wrong on this one, as the last thing the industry needs is to get another round of layoffs from a studio, that, according to rumors, was having problems of their own.
These rumors have also appeared at a bad time for the company, as the business as a whole is facing a continuing wave of layoffs. While rumors hadn’t come up to suggest Don’t Nod was having problems with its viability as well, it’s hard to ignore that they were following the same pattern that those other companies have been showing as well.
For its part, Don’t Nod had just released its latest title, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, just last month. While the title had received sterling reviews, it seems to have come out under the radar, as hype last February grew around Helldivers 2 instead. For the moment, Don’t Nod and the game’s publisher, Focus Entertainment, have yet to reveal sales figures for the project.
We hope everything really is OK for Don’t Nod, for the sake of its fans, and especially for the people who work there.
