Bandai Namco is reportedly cutting its Japanese workforce and cancelling some of its games because of disappointing sales.
Bandai Namco is reportedly cutting its Japanese workforce and cancelling some of its games because of disappointing sales
According to a recent report from Bloomberg, the studio - which recently released ‘Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! Zero’ - has been shuffling some of its employees and pausing or cancelling some projects due to “lacklustre demand”.
The outlet claimed Bandai Namco was moving some staff into “rooms where they are given nothing to do”, seemingly in an attempt to get developers to voluntarily leave the company.
These rooms, which are called ‘oidashi beya’ or ‘expulsion rooms’, are commonly used in Japanese companies to get staff to willingly leave due to the country’s strict labour-protection laws.
As a result of this supposed effort, sources say roughly 100 employees have resigned since April, with a further 100 expected to leave the studio over the next few months.
However, Bandai Namco has since denied this report, and insisted there are no such rooms at the company.
In a statement, a representative for the studio said: “Our decisions to discontinue games are based on comprehensive assessments of the situation. Some employees may need to wait a certain amount of time before they are assigned their next project, but we do move forward with assignments as new projects emerge.
“There is no organisation like an ‘oidashi beya’ at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily.”