While news of layoffs often comes from Western companies, Japanese companies sometimes cut their staff as well. It was previously reported that Bandai Namco was trying to reduce its workforce, and now it seems the company has let go of more than 100 employees.
According to Automaton, a document from a Japanese pension database shows that 117 employees left Bandai Namco between April 2024 and February 2025. It’s not clear if these workers left on their own or were laid off.
Last year, Bloomberg reported that Bandai Namco was adopting a traditional Japanese approach to downsizing, where workers are sent to rooms with no tasks to do and are pressured to leave voluntarily. This is part of a practice known as Oidashi Beya, used by Japanese companies to isolate employees by not assigning them work, with the goal of making them quit on their own rather than being officially laid off and receiving severance pay.
In the same report, it was mentioned that Bandai Namco had canceled several games, including titles based on One Piece and Naruto, along with a contract project with Nintendo.
Although it’s hard to link the layoffs directly to these cancellations, it seems that Bandai Namco’s efforts to reduce its workforce are now showing results, as the company has seen some success with the release of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, which has reached new sales milestones on PC and console.
