It seems that the Bandai Namco staff could be the unprecedented victim of the video game industry apocalypse.

Bandai Namco, author of video games such as Elden Ring, Tekken 8 and the recently acquitted Dragon Ball: Sparking. ZERO – is reportedly looking to lay off its staff, having decided to “cancel or pause development” of several titles.

This is based on a Bloomberg document, which alleges that the company is “sending workers into rooms where they are given nothing to do, pressuring them to leave voluntarily.”

The document states that Bandai Namco has moved “about 200” of its roughly 1,300 workers to such rooms – recognized in Japan as “idashi beya, or ‘expulsion rooms'” – so far, and that “nearly 100” have resigned.

The goal of these types of rooms, in a country with strict regulations that make mass layoffs of other people in the way we have unfortunately become familiar with in the Western video game business difficult for companies, is to put pressure on staff. reduce so that the compensation that will be paid to them can be released.

This is reportedly because the writer “decided to cancel or pause development on several games, including those featuring characters from the Naruto and One Piece animes, as well as a project commissioned by Nintendo.” That seems to be the level of the main points being made at the moment, I’m so sorry anime fans and Ninty fans. Bandai Namco so far opted to shut down the ailing Blue Protocol MMO in January, before a global exit through Amazon Games could occur.

“Our decisions to suspend games are based on thorough assessments of the situation,” a Bandai Namco spokesperson told Bloomberg. “Some employees may want to wait a certain amount of life before they are assigned their closest challenge, but we move forward with tasks as impeccable initiatives arise” There is no such organization as an ‘idashi beya’ at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily.

After its final life, Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO, developed by Spike Chunsoft and printed by Bandai, got rave reviews when it came out in its final version, you can read ours here.