Bandai Namco – Publisher of games including Elden Ring, Tekken 8 and the recently released Dragon Ball: Sparks! ZERO is reportedly looking to reduce headcount and has decided to “cancel or suspend development” of several games.
According to Bloomberg, the company “sends employees to rooms with nothing to do and pressures them to leave voluntarily.”
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Bandai Namco has so far moved “about 200” of its roughly 1,300 employees into the rooms – known in Japan as “oidashi beya, or ‘eviction rooms'”, the report said, with “nearly 200 of them” 100 people” have resigned.
In a country with strict employment laws, the purpose of these rooms is to force employees out of the company, something we’ve become accustomed to in the Western games industry, which is hard to do, resulting in mass layoffs. Fashion.
According to reports, the publisher “decided to cancel or suspend the development of multiple games, including games featuring characters from the anime “Naruto” and “One Piece,” as well as a project commissioned by Nintendo.” This looks to be the extent of the details provided so far, sorry anime lovers and Ninty fans. Bandai Namco chose to shut down MMO Blue Protocol back in January, before the global version developed by Amazon Games was launched.
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A spokesperson for Bandai Namco told Bloomberg: “Our decision to discontinue the game is based on a thorough assessment of the situation. Some employees may have to wait a while before being assigned their next project, but we do continue to move forward with new projects as they emerge. “Bandai Namco Studio does not have an organization like ‘oidashi beya’ designed to force people to leave voluntarily.”
Following last week’s release, Dragon Ball: Sparks Fly! ZERO – developed by Spike Chunsoft and published by Bandai – was released last week to very positive reviews, and you can read our review here.
