Sega of America has not officially chimed in, but several sources have corroborated that the game company is set to lay off 61 of their employees.
Word initially spread because of a layoff notice mandated by the California WARN, or Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. Eurogamer reporting on this, states that they have confirmed these layoffs with the Employment Development Department of the State of California.
The layoffs are scheduled on 8th March, in groups of 12 and 49 respectively. The fact that they were planned well in advance, and Sega knowingly let these sources come up instead of announcing it themselves, means two things. One, they have acquired some level of legal clearance for these layoffs, and two, they know that the gaming public would be reacting negatively to this news.
On Twitter, the Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega, the Sega union associated with the CWA, shared this statement:
“A few months ago, Sega management announced their plan to outsource QA and part of Localization in a move that would significantly impact our workforce.
We’ve been fighting back on these terms since then, but today the layoff that will result in the loss of 61 jobs across these two departments was made public.
Through our union efforts, we’ve been able to more than double the number of saved jobs, and to offer severance to our temp workers.
This, however, does not take away from the fact that many of our coworkers are being laid off in a decision we believe will have a negative impact on the working conditions of those who remain with the company, and in the quality of our future games.
In spite of this, we remain committed to fighting for our coworkers, and for the betterment of our industry. In the face of mass layoffs that continue to happen across gaming companies, we stand united and in solidarity with those affected.”
So, the CWA associated AEGIS was able to avert making this an even bigger round of layoffs than it already was and to help some of the outgoing workers. But their efforts still were not enough to stop layoffs from happening at all.
An even broader picture emerges if we review our prior reporting on this matter. AEGIS was founded all the way back in July of last year, and even then, they had cause to complain that SEGA of America refused to recognize their union. In November, the CWA accused SEGA of America of threatening their unionized workers with layoffs themselves.
So SEGA was likely planning to do these layoffs much earlier, but thanks to successful organizing, SEGA’s employees successfully formed a union and stopped a large number of those layoffs from happening. This is happening in a business environment where American workers in the video game industry are facing a growing number of layoffs overall.
SEGA may seem to be doing well following the success of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, but the game company has already been doing layoffs throughout last year. They fired people at Creative Assembly, at the same time that they had cancelled the studio’s upcoming live service game, Hyenas. This points to money problems at the company, that they will now have to find different ways to address than layoffs.
GameRanx wishes the outgoing employees of SEGA of America the best and we hope they can find placement back into the video game industry.
