According to the report Bloomberg, Bandai Namco (publisher of Elden Ring and Dragon Ball) placed 200 employees in «exile rooms», thus provoking them to resign at will.
In Japanese, the term «oidashi beya» (exile room) refers to the process of placing employees in cubicles (often without windows), forcing them to perform monotonous, unnecessary work or leaving them without tasks at all — these actions are aimed at making employees realize their unproductivity and quit at will without violating Japan’s strict labor laws.
It is reported that about a hundred employees of the publisher have already quit.
At the same time, Bandai Namco has denied using «exclusion rooms, emphasizing that some «employees may have to wait until they are involved in»’s next projects.
«Our decisions to cancel games are based on a comprehensive assessment of the situation. Some employees may have to wait for a period of time before being assigned to the next project. Bandai Namco does not use a method such as «oidashi beya», which puts pressure on people to leave voluntarily».
Bandai Namco — one of the largest publishers in the industry, which, like other gaming companies, is experiencing financial difficulties, despite the release of such hits as Elden Ring or Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO, which was released last week.
Earlier this year, Bandai Namco shut down the mobile game Tales of the Rays and announced its intention to cancel the popular free-to-play RPG action game Blue Protocol. Bloomberg also writes that the publisher has either suspended or completely canceled the development of several additional games, including those based on the Naruto and One Piece anime, as well as one mystery project it was working on with Nintendo.
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