What you need to know
- Bandai Namco Entertainment is one of the biggest game publishers in the world, and is behind hugely popular titles like Elden Ring and Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO.
- According to a new report, the company has moved 200 of its staff into oidashi beya, or "expulsion rooms," in an effort to pressure them to resign from their positions.
- In these rooms, workers are given no assignments, but understand their lack of productivity can be used as grounds to cut severance pay. Effectively, they're designed to get employees to leave voluntarily without breaching Japan's strict labor laws.
- In a statement, Bandai Namco has denied that it's making use of oidashi beya, commenting that "some employees may need to wait a certain amount of time before they are assigned their next project."
- The report comes after Bandai Namco cancelled multiple games, and notes that one of them was an unknown project in development with Nintendo. It also comes amidst widespread turmoil in the gaming industry, with over 23,000 cuts recorded since 2023.
