About 100 people are said to have resigned
©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Bandai Namco Holdings has paused or canceled development on several unannounced games, including an unannounced title. Nintendo has commissioned as well as unannounced titles for the Naruto and One Piece series. The company is said to be cutting its workforce of 1,300 people due to canceled projects.
According to Bloomberg sources, the company has transferred about 200 employees to the so-called oidashi beya, or “deportation room,” to encourage them to work. voluntarily resigned, with about 100 employees having done so. Workers assigned to oidashi beya were not assigned tasks, but their failure to work could affect severance pay, so employees were implicitly encouraged to resign. Such methods of encouraging voluntary resignations are an unwritten practice in some Japanese companies aimed at circumventing the country's labor laws.
Bandai Namco told Bloomberg that employees “may need to wait a certain amount of time” before taking on new assignments after canceled projects, but that ultimately reassigned such employees and denied acknowledge the existence of oidashi beya activities within the company.
Bandai Namco Entertainment recently terminated its Tales of the Rays smartphone game service on July 23, after seven years of operation. This game is the last remaining of Bandai Namco Entertainment's five Tales of smartphone games. Bandai Namco Online's Blue Protocol game will also end its service on January 18, with plans to release the game in the West also being cancelled. Bandai Namco Entertainment's mecha exploitation shooter Synduality Echo of Ada will launch on January 24, nearly three years since the game was first announced as part of a larger hybrid TV series includes the manga and television anime Synduality: Noir.
Source: Bloomberg (Takashi Mochizuki) via Siliconera
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a minority, non-controlling shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.