Bandai Namco Is Now The Latest Games Company Dealing With Layoffs
by Ollie Barder · ForbesFollowing the massive layoffs across the games industry Bandai Namco is now the latest to be affected, as it has cancelled various projects, impacting its staffing.
According to Bloomberg, Bandai Namco has canceled a variety of gaming projects, from Naruto to One Piece and even something with Nintendo. These project cancellations will also have an impact on Bandai Namco’s staffing, with layoffs or their equivalent to be expected.
Bandai Namco is also the first major Japanese games company to be impacted by this kind of typically Western budgetary downsizing, which likely means it won’t be the last.
Unlike Western games companies, Japanese employment law makes laying permanent staff off quite difficult, so people will be effectively “asked to leave”.
As I’ve explained previously, much of what is driving these game industry layoffs is due to excessive game budgets over the last decade. With most large games taking 7-8 years to make, it means we are only beginning to see the results of this budgetary overspend now.
The follow on from all this, is that all the game studios in Japan that were working with these publishers are now also affected. However, as downsizing isn’t feasible due to previously mentioned Japanese employment law, many studios will likely just go bankrupt.
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The result will be the same though; lots of game developers out of work and no money in publishing to create new studios. Resulting in a massive loss of institutional knowledge and creative expertise across the Japanese games industry.
Again, because of the lead time for game development, we won’t be seeing tangible results from all this for a good few years.
That means if Bandai Namco isn’t the only Japanese game publisher facing cutbacks, then gaming as a medium is going to have a rough time over the next decade.