Despite the publisher just having released the excellent Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Sega of America has announced its intent to fire 61 staff from its American branch.
This info comes from a WARN notice. This is a legal requirement for California-based companies, and requires corporate entities to give employees a 60 day notice before firing a sizable portion of its workforce. 61 laid-off employees would make up roughly 14% of SEGA of America’s current workforce.
SEGA of America had previously come under fire for allegedly threatening unionized employees with layoffs without going to their union first back in November of 2023. In the original Kotaku report, sources claim that unionized employees were brought into a meeting, where they were informed of plans to phase out temporary staff by February 2024. Employees that would fall under this categorisation would make up a total of roughly 80 staff.
This latest announcement comes in the midst of a massive wave of video game industry layoffs, that first hit our shores in 2023 alongside wider tech sector downsizing. After making bold post-pandemic growth predictions, companies have been adjusting their workforces en masse to accomadate for missing targets that were pretty unrealistic. The result? Layoffs hitting video game studios big and small, including Riot Games, Microsoft, 3D Realms, Team 17 and many more.
With SEGA, this further proves that a successful video game launch or two won’t make any difference on these layoffs for even some of the industry’s biggest names. It didn’t matter that Infinite Wealth was due or how well it might do, people were likely going to lose their jobs regardless. SEGA’s even got Persona 3 Reload coming out soon too – the company is riding high, and yet still we’re seeing it move to enact layoffs.
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the WARN notice has given folks working at SEGA of America a chance to prepare, rather than face down the dire situation suddenly and without warning. We can only hope that the staff affected land on their feet, and that the next company hit by layoffs get the same small courtesy.