Bandai Namco is one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, and it’s had a rough year. Several games on its slate have been canceled, while others did not live up to its financial expectations. As often happens, the company has turned to layoffs to save some cash.
Japan’s labor laws make it extremely difficult to lay off employees. So Bandai Namco has allegedly resorted to a questionable but tried-and-true tactic: expulsion rooms. Basically, an employer makes its employees so horrifically bored that they are compelled to quit.
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In this bizarre workaround, the company stripped its affected employees of all responsibility, reassigned them to expulsion rooms in office buildings, and gave them absolutely nothing to do. The idea is to bore them or culturally shame them into accepting a severance package so they can officially be laid off. Employees sentenced to layoff-by-boredom usually spend their time looking for other jobs.
Bloomberg reports that of Bandai Namco Studios Inc.’s 1,300 employees, around 200 had been moved into such rooms. Nearly 100 have already resigned.
The company’s changes come after Bandai Namco either canceled or stalled development on a series of projects in the past year, including a smartphone game called Tales of the Rays and an MMORPG called Blue Protocol that was released in Japan but saw its Western release canceled.
Per Bloomberg, the company says it is not using the old expulsion room tactic to circumvent Japan’s strict labor laws, but reports, including an anonymous website for leaks, seem to suggest otherwise. It’s also considered a common practice in Japan, one that companies, like Bandai Namco in this case, don’t like to admit.
