Amidst the mass firing in the Western games industry, it seems one company across the Pacific has unfortunately followed suit. The Japanese publisher Bandai Namco is accused of laying off employees after canceling several high-profile projects, including a Nintendo and One Piece game. Bandai Namco is well-known as the owner of the Gundam IP and has a chokehold on Shonen Jump anime-adaptation licenses. This shocking news comes after another Japanese game company, FromSoftware, announced it will raise staff’s salaries by 11.8% early this month.
According to a Bloomberg report, the Tokyo-based company has decided to either ‘cancel or pause’ the development of several projects based on ‘comprehensive assessments.’ Some include an unnamed project commissioned by Nintendo and anime games featuring popular characters from Naruto and One Piece.
The organization’s 2025 fiscal year financial report mentioned the strong performance of The iDOLM@STER Gakuen mobile game and Shadow of the Erdtree Elden Ring DLC. Nevertheless, Bandai Namco recently shut down the seven-year-long Tales of the Rays mobile game, along with Blue Protocol, which spent eight years in troubled development.
The report’s sources also added that since April 2024, Bandai Namco Entertainment’s subsidiary, Bandai Namco Studios, is preparing to retire 15% of its 1,300-strong workforce. So far, 100 employees have resigned and more are ‘expected to leave’ in the coming months.
The Tokyo-based company is accused of using oidashibeya, translated as “expulsion rooms,” to pressure employees to quit voluntarily. This is a common practice of quiet firing in Japanese businesses, where undesirable workers are secluded in a room with nothing to do.
In the Bloomberg report, a Bandai Namco representative denies employing the expulsion room method to pressure employees. They simply said that employees ‘may need to wait’ until they’re assigned to the next project. “There is no organization like an ‘oidashibeya’ at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily.”
Bandai Namco seems to be going down a rocky road amidst mass layoffs and having to cancel Nintendo and One Piece projects. Somewhat ironic, considering it publishes games made by FromSoftware, which offers its employees a more comfortable cushion.
