A report from Bloomberg says that Bandai Namco is attempting to reduce its workforce not by laying off employees but by pushing employees to resign.
The report says that several titles that were in development for both consoles and mobile at Bandai Namco have been cancelled. As a result of these titles being cancelled, the company is taking "a traditionally Japanese approach to reducing staff." Employees that no longer have projects to work on are being sent to oidashi beya or "expulsion rooms."
These employees sent to the so-called expulsion rooms are given nothing to do. They are essentially put under pressure to leave voluntarily. According to Bloomberg's sources, Bandai Namco has moved about 200 employees to expulsion rooms since at April of this year. Of those nearly 200 employees sent to these rooms, almost 100 of them have resigned. More are expected to resign in the months ahead.
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.
"Our decisions to discontinue games are based on comprehensive assessments of the situation. Some employees may need to wait a certain amount of time before they are assigned their next project, but we do move forward with assignments as new projects emerge," a representative of Bandai Namco said. "There is no organization like an ‘oidashi beya’ at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily."
