Bandai Namco is reportedly reducing its workforce in the East and canceling numerous projects due to lack of demand.
The inside track comes as the company experiences strong sales of its original released anime game Dragon Ball Z: Sparking. 0.
As Bloomberg has reported, workers are not being laid off without delay. Instead, since April, around 200 of Bandai Namco Studios’ 1,300 employees in Japan have been sent to rooms with nothing to do, prompting them to voluntarily leave. Nearly 100 public officials have resigned in this way, according to Bloomberg sources.
Such rooms are known as oidashi beya and are used due to strict labor regulations in Japan. Many employees value those rooms to look for tasks before they willingly retire.
In a comment to Bloomberg, Bandai Namco denied the value of those rooms.
“Our decisions to suspend games are based on thorough assessments of the situation. Some employees may need to wait a certain amount of time before being assigned their next project, but we are moving forward with assignments as new projects arise,” he mentioned. a consultant. from Bandai Namco. “There is no organization like an ‘idashi beya’ at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily.”
Bandai Namco has revamped its range of games, making write-downs worth 21 billion yen (£107 million) in the three quarters to December.
Games like the Japan-exclusive MMORPG Blue Protocol were banned in August, before Amazon Games revealed its international release. The Stories of the Rays mobile game was also very sick in July in Japan.
Several other projects have reportedly been banned or suspended, including the popular animes Naruto and One Piece, and a project commissioned by Nintendo.
The inside track follows the release of Dragon Ball: Sparking! 0 extreme while, also according to a popular anime, it sold more than 3 million devices in its first 24 hours on sale. On Steam it has already reached a maximum concurrent player count of over 122,000 players, with enough additional players on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Line X/S.
