Life Is Strange Developer Don't Nod is Running Out of Money - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 16 June 2026 / 2,441 Views
Life Is Strange developer Don't Nod Entertainment is running out of money and will have used up its reserves in November unless it's able to find new funding, according to a note from an auditor.
The auditor says Don't Nod could explore releasing its next game sooner than planned, getting more funding, or taking on work for hire projects.
"The Company had, as of April 7, 2026, cash on hand of approximately €8.8 million," reads the note (via VideoGamesChronicle). "Your Chairman informed us that he had been seeking additional financing for several months and that all avenues were being explored to improve the Company’s cash position, whether through a capital increase or external financing for your game currently under development.
"The Company’s management has informed us that, according to its cash flow projections, without additional financing and taking into account, among other things, revenue assumptions related to the release of a new game in late April 2026 and cost savings that are not yet fully effective, the Company is expected to run out of cash during the month of November 2026.
"Your Chairman also informed us that, following his inquiries, your principal shareholder, TENCENT, did not wish to subscribe to a capital increase in the short term nor to contribute to the financing of games currently in development through co-production agreements.
"Finally, your Chairman informed us that discussions had been underway with certain major players in the video game industry for several months but that these had not led to any structured financing offer. Given the situation, we considered that the facts mentioned above were such as to jeopardize the going concern of your Company."
Don't Nod is based in Paris, France and was founded in 2008. The studio most recently released Lost Records: Bloom & Rage in February 2025 and Aphelion in April 2026.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Only Jusant caught my eye. The other games were pretty woke.
As soon as I seen someone mention woke, I just immediately assume that person is racist/homophobic/hates women/hates people being happy in general.
I wouldn't go that far, but I agree it is being used a lot as a collective curseword for anything people don't like when it is just meant to be about being considerate towards each other. And what is wrong about being considerate towards each other and let people be happy?
Woke is woke and we all know what it means, at least roughly. It is simply about pushing a certain cluster of political beliefs in media, which means that it will appeal to a very limited audience. Hence the situation they are in. People can call out woke without being any of those things you mentioned. Me for example, I have nothing against minorities but if a game is centered around a minority identity, it is not something I will be interested in as a theme or story. While Don't Nod games may not be entirely about such things, that background often comes with a certain style and presentation that don't appeal to me either in a purely technical sense.
Assumptions are the mother of all fuck ups. It says a lot more about you to be honest.
Given the context people often use it in, it can be a pretty fair (but not universal) assumption.
But you do have to pick up the context. For example, sibensus has used the word very differently to skikamaru.
Dude. You literally just labelled him.
He's not wrong though, while woke is often used as a label for anything someone doesn't like, I think it's safe to say that Dontnod has been a fairly woke studio over the years based on the original slang definition of woke (which was "aware of and actively attentive to certain facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice”). Their games are often designed to highlight social messages, they often go for minority representation, a lesbian in one game, a trans man in another, they put a Cuban in 1600's New England as their main character once even though that would have been an incredibly rare sight in New England at the time.
Some love them because of their woke themes and I'm sure they will lament them closing if they can't find funding before November, others tend to be tired of how often themes like Dontnod's have appeared across various western gaming studios in the last 15 years or so, progressively more and more often.
1.) Assuming someone is a collection of bad guy tropes over an icky word reflects worse on you than him.
2.) Even if certain circles bastardize it to hell and back, we need to stop pretending it's not part of the internet's modern vernacular. Update your firmware to 2026. A certain group of lefty/Breadtube types have no problem with owning the word's broadly-understood definition, even calling themselves "Dark Woke" as a signal of their resolve to be meaner than in the pre-Trump era.
Too many underperforming games by them in recent years, it's to be expected. Of all the games they have released since Life Is Strange 2's final episode in 2019, only 1 of them did well, performing above expectations, Jusant. Tell Me Why, Twin Mirror, Harmony: Fall of Reverie, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, and Aphelion each performed under expectations.
It's been along time since their last great game... and since then, their quality have dropped right? That is what happens.... bad product = bad sales = consequences.
My sympathies, but Life Is Strange was their only great game, in my opinion. I enjoyed Remember Me and Vampyr, despite the rough edges. The rest I either didn't enjoy or didn't even bother playing.
Kinda odd to use a picture from LiS True Colors given that Dont Nod didn’t make that one.
I thought they were all made by the sams team
1 and 2 were by Dont Nod.
Before the Storm, True Colors, Double Exposure and Reunion were all developed by Deck Nine.
True colors was great. That chen character, what a woman 😍
In retrospect it's kinda telling that after producing their biggest hit, Life is Strange, they ended up producing a grand total of one of the next five entries in the series, and it seems to be the one no-one really talks about despite being the only numbered sequel.
That's more of a SquEnix thing. Don'tNod were independent but needed publishers, SquEnix no doubt got the IP in the deal. Deck Nine seem happy to just churn out the series for SquEnix while Don'tNod might have wanted to do other things, more things.
If anything, Don'tNod seemed to be just too big for what they are offering. Middling games with a decent "indie" like hit every now and then isn't enough when you have nearly as many employees as Guerilla Games.
What is costing them 9 million in five moths?
