Bandai Namco Holdings — the conglomerate of which online game writer and developer Bandai Namco Leisure is a component — is reportedly making a swathe of cuts to its workforce, which incorporates cancelling or pausing a lot of tasks.
In keeping with a report by Bloomberg (paywalled), a Nintendo-commissioned venture is among the many cancelled titles, alongside video games primarily based on the anime properties One Piece and Naruto.
What that Nintendo venture is, we do not know, however Bandai Namco has beforehand labored with Nintendo a number of occasions through the years, serving to out with Tremendous Smash Bros. on 3DS and Wii U, and Final, in addition to Pokkén Event. It additionally created over half of the belongings for programs, characters, and kart components for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Alongside this, Bandai Namco is reportedly utilizing “oidashi beya” — expulsion rooms — to place strain on round 200 staff to go away voluntarily, reasonably than outright hearth them. Bloomberg experiences that this can be a “historically Japanese strategy to lowering employees” as the workers are given no work to do whereas within the room. Oftentimes, staff use that point to search for different jobs.
Bloomberg’s sources have understandably requested to not be recognized. Nonetheless, simply final month, an nameless web site referred to as Leak Press opened, claiming that Bandai Namco is utilizing numerous strategies to pressure staff to go away.
A consultant at Bandai Namco advised Bloomberg “Our choices to discontinue video games are primarily based on complete assessments of the state of affairs,” saying that many staff may need to attend time earlier than “they’re assigned their subsequent venture.”
The rep additionally pushed apart claims that oidashi beya are getting used, saying “there is no such thing as a organisation” like that getting used “to strain folks to go away voluntarily.” Additionally they refused to elaborate on Leak Press, merely stating that the corporate knew of its existence.
Simply final 12 months, Bandai Namco formally introduced Bandai Namco Studio 2 & Studio S, a improvement studio particularly constructed to work on commissioned tasks, with them even being linked to a Nintendo venture. Then, earlier this 12 months, customers on social media noticed that the studio was “now not” hiring for positions associated to a Nintendo venture.
No point out of that studio is made within the report, however we don’t know what it is engaged on for the time being, or if that Nintendo venture was one which it was engaged on.
Nonetheless, that is yet one more sobering story in a tumultuous trade, which has seen a brutal string of layoffs over the past two years. Bandai Namco hasn’t been immune to those points beforehand, both, with the corporate cancelling the Western launch of its MMORPG Blue Protocol simply final month.
[source bloomberg.com]
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