Nacon, the holder of the World Rally Championship’s official video game license, has filed for insolvency.
The French firm succeeded EA Sports as the developer of the WRC in May 2025, after EA announced it was pausing development on future rally titles.
It had previously held the WRC video game license after purchasing the Kylotonn Games studio in 2018, which had held the official WRC license between 2015-2022. The new deal between Nacon and the WRC was to begin in 2027 and stretch through to 2032.
Nacon’s majority shareholder, BigBen Interactive, is currently facing liquidity issues, announcing last week that its banking pool was unable to provide it with enough capital to repay a loan to its bondholders.
That means Nacon cannot afford its current debt but will continue to receive income through any current game sales.
DirtFish approached WRC Promoter for comment on what Nacon’s insolvency proceeding means for championship’s official game franchise; it told DirtFish that it cannot comment at this time.
Alain Falc, CEO of Nacon and Bigben (which owns 56.72% of the publisher’s capital), told French newspaper Les Echos: “We are profitable and there is no problem with continuing operations. We have a debt problem, and this procedure will allow us to freeze them while we come up with solutions. It has been a very unpleasant crisis situation to go through, but we are confident about the future.
“For the parent company, we are going to renegotiate the amount of debt and repayment terms. As for Nacon, we are going to do the same, but we are also going to reduce capital expenditure on our games, cut costs and consider selling assets.’
“Preserving jobs will be our priority, but [job cuts are] a possibility. We have a lot of games coming out and therefore a lot of money coming in, with an increasingly substantial back catalogue. This will enable us to pay all our suppliers in the short term.”
