According to an announcement today from Senior Vice President at Bandai Namco Landon Nguyen, Bandai Namco Vancouver will be closing down soon.
“I’m sad to announce that as of today Bandai Namco Studios Vancouver will be shutting down. I want to thank everyone who came with us on this journey. We shipped some awesome experiences together. Thank you to all the fans who supported our games and our studio.”
The studio was founded in March 2013 and became a major focal point of Bandai Namco’s efforts to break into the mobile and tablet sectors of the gaming industry. Over the last five years, Bandai Namco Vancouver has released a variety of games, almost exclusively in that mobile sphere of influence. The company has developed and released games like Tekken Mobile, Pac-Man 256, Pac-Man Bounce and Tap My Katamari.
The most recently-released project, Tekken Mobile, will continue to be supported by a small crew at the studio.
Looking into the most recent financial statements of the company as a whole, paints a decent picture. Bandai Namco has improved over the last year, so far turning a quarterly profit for the fiscal quarter ending March 2019 of more than 43 million yen. This is up from the 35 million yen the company floated for the same quarter the previous year. And although this could change, things are looking up. The company also managed to either satisfy or beat sales projections in 2018, so it’s hard to say exactly what’s happening at a parent company level.
Looking at Glass Door reviews for the studio in particular, poor pay, high turnover and general mismanagement categorize the studio as a poor working environment. Although I would take these with a massive grain of salt. If these allegations are true, it’s much more understandable why the studio was struggling, independent of the success of the parent company.
It’s not clear at this time what led to the shutdown. It could be a slump in sales and advertising bookings that led to an unsustainable financial situation, it could also just be corporate restructuring on the part of Bandai Namco. It seems that whatever the case, things are looking a little less appealing in the mobile gaming space.
