Bandai Namco reportedly lost over 100 staff in the last year

Bandai Namco has reportedly lost over a hundred staff in the last year.

As reported by Automaton, according to the online database of Japan's Pension Service, the company's staff headcount dropped from 1294 on 1st April 2024 to 1177 on 4th February 2025 - a decrease of 117 people.

It's unclear which projects these employees were working on, or whether they left the company voluntarily or not.

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The news follows a report from Bloomberg last year stating the company was cutting its Japanese workforce and cancelling a number of projects due to lacklustre demand.

What's more, while staff had not been directly laid off, around 200 employees were sent to what's known as "oidashi beya" - rooms where staff are left without a project to work on, often used instead for job hunting. These rooms are utilised in Japan due to strict labour laws making layoffs difficult to enforce.

At the time, Bandai Namco denied using these rooms. "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," said a representative from Bandai Namco. "There is no organisation like an 'oidashi beya' at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily."

Eurogamer has once again contacted Bandai Namco to confirm this latest loss of staff, but the company declined to comment.

However, these numbers from Japan's Pension Service do appear to line up with Bloomberg's report.

The Japan-only MMORPG Blue Protocol was cancelled by Bandai Namco in August last year, ahead of its Amazon Games published worldwide release. Mobile game Tales of the Rays was also shut down last year.

Several other projects have reportedly been cancelled or paused, including a project commissioned by Nintendo.

Last month, the Bandai Namco-published Unknown 9 franchise was cancelled as the developer admitted it "didn't come near" expectations.

Next for Bandai Namco will be the network test for Elden Ring spin-off Nightreign later this month.

The news also follows the bizarre LinkedIn update from Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada who, after posting he was looking for new job opportunities, claimed he just wants to "meet more people and expand my horizons in the future".