Bandai Namco Holdings is cutting its workforce after canceling several titles in the latest sign that rising costs and plateauing demand are depressing the gaming’s industry’s bottom lines.
The Tokyo-based company is taking a traditionally Japanese approach to reducing staff by sending workers to rooms where they are given nothing to do, putting pressure on them to leave voluntarily, according to people familiar with the matter. Since April, affiliate Bandai Namco Studios has moved about 200 of its roughly 1,300 employees to such rooms and nearly 100 have resigned, said the people, asking not to be named discussing private information. More are expected to leave in coming months, they said.
Such oidashi beya, or "expulsion rooms,” are sometimes used by Japanese corporations in a country with some of the world’s strictest labor-protection laws. Employees are typically given no work-related tasks, but are left with the knowledge that their performance will give managers ammunition to cut severance when they do leave. Many employees use their time in such rooms to look for other jobs.
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