Trading name Dontnod Entertainment Key people Oskar Guilbert (CEO) Headquarters Paris Number of employees 120 (2016) | Industry Video game industry Website dont-nod.com Founded June 2008, France Type Privately held company | |
Products Remember Me
Life Is Strange
Vampyr Founders Alain Damasio, Oskar Guilbert, Hervé Bonin, Jean-Maxime Moris, Aleksi Briclot Video games Life Is Strange, Remember Me, Vampyr, Life Is Strange 2 Profiles | ||
Don't Nod Entertainment SARL, doing business as Dontnod Entertainment (stylised as DONTИOD), is a French video game developer based in Paris. Since 2013, it has released the action-adventure Remember Me and the graphic adventure Life Is Strange.
History
Dontnod Entertainment was co-founded by Hervé Bonin, Aleksi Briclot, Alain Damasio, Oskar Guilbert and Jean-Maxime Moris on 2 June 2008 along with other ex-Criterion Games, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts staff. The first game released by the developer was Remember Me, which received mixed reviews and mediocre sales. On 31 January 2014, French media outlets and gaming websites reported that Dontnod was filing for bankruptcy as a result of the poor sales of Remember Me. Dontnod responded to these reports explaining that the developer was in the process of "judicial reorganization". The company turned to public funding to finance a new intellectual property as a result of this. On 5 June 2014, Dontnod announced that they were working on a new game with publisher Square Enix to be distributed digitally. The game was later announced to be called Life Is Strange, and was released in 2015. The financial and commercial success of Life Is Strange marked a change in how the studio was perceived in the industry. Following its release, Dontnod started being solicited by publishers, where once they had to pursue publishers themselves.
Co-founder and CEO Oskar Guilbert said in April 2016 that the studio had cast off the ambition of making triple A games and currently see themselves only developing independent projects, especially original intellectual properties. For the sake of maintaining the motivation of players and publishers, Guilbert intends for the production cycle to be reduced to two and a half or three years. The studio is working on a role-playing game called Vampyr. An unannounced project is reportedly also in development.