Can Aphelion Save Don’t Nod?

The French studio Don’t Nod Entertainment, known for Life is Strange, has faced significant financial struggles recently. However, the company saw a clear improvement in the first half of 2025 (ending June 30). They reported operating revenues of 7.0 million ezris, which is a huge 3.8 times increase from the 1.9 million euros reported in the first half of 2024. For this article, we will analyze whether their new game Aphelion can save the company from going bankrupt.

What is happening with Don’t Nod?

This positive jump in revenue, however, happened while the company still had big losses. Don’t Nod’s net loss was €20.8 million (though this was half the €42.4 million loss from the year before), and operating profit was a negative €21.9 million. Their cash reserves also dropped, falling from €32.9 million at the end of 2024 to €23.4 million. To help control the damage, they limited their cash spending to €9.5 million. They achieved this by starting a €5 million cost-saving plan (which fully took effect in the second half of 2025). This plan included reorganizing their studios and cutting personnel costs by 16%.

The company’s full-year 2024 results were also very difficult: revenues dropped 25% to €23.9 million, and they had a negative cash flow of €3.3 million from their regular work. Their recent release, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, did not sell as well as they had hoped, leading to layoffs at Don’t Nod Montreal in June 2025 and a non-cash write-down of €13.1 million for the game’s value.

To stabilize the company, Don’t Nod has taken major steps: they suspended two internal projects (P12 and P13), started focusing on co-productions and external publishing (like The Lonesome Guild, released in October 2025), and signed a big deal with Netflix to develop a narrative game based on a well-known IP at their Montreal studio.

Announced at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2025, Aphelion is Don’t Nod’s ambitious new IP – a cinematic sci-fi action-adventure set in a near-future where Earth faces environmental collapse. Players guide Ariane Montclair, an ESA astronaut after she crash-lands on the icy planet Persephone with her colleague Thomas Cross. The two must find each other while navigating the harsh environment: using parkour over ice bridges, solving tool-based puzzles, and using stealth to hide from a mysterious alien threat.

Developed at Don’t Nod’s Paris studio in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) for realistic science, the game is being compared to the platforming of Uncharted and sci-fi movies like The Martian. The new trailer for Aphelion, titled “Hide to Survive”, which dropped today during the ID@Xbox Fall Showcase, dives deeper into the game’s survival horror elements, introducing the alien threat and key gameplay loops.

Aphelion could meaningfully help stabilize Don’t Nod