Square Enix’s offices in the UK and US are undergoing mass lay-offs. According to a report by IGN, while an exact number of affected employees hasn’t yet been confirmed, it is believed to potentially impact more than 100 workers across the company’s international offices. In its own statement, Square Enix has confirmed that it is in the process of reorganising its operations across North America and Europe, in line with a recent progress report on its mid-term business plans.
“We are reorganising our operations in North America and Europe to strengthen our development structure and to drive a globally integrated marketing strategy,” said Square Enix in a statement. “This was an extremely difficult decision, made following careful consideration and analysis by our leadership, in order to best position the Group’s long-term growth.”
“We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the talented team members who will be departing the company for their significant contributions to Square Enix. During this period of transition, we remain committed to treating each individual with the utmost respect and providing extensive support throughout this process.”
According to IGN’s report, Square Enix employees across the US and UK have been notified of impending lay-offs, with US-based employees slated to be dismissed by the company by the end of the week. Around 137 employees are expected to be affected by this reorganisation in the UK. This number might change, however, owing to UK’s laws which require the company to partake in consultation processes to see if any of the lay-offs can be avoided.
In its progress report, Square Enix had noted that the general idea behind this reorganisation was to “improve operational efficiency.” To do so, several divisions across its global publishing offices would be trimmed down and streamlined to only four core departments: global marketing, intelligence, regional marketing, and sales. The company noted that its “overly layered and segmented organisational structure” had to be changed into lean, agile and multi-skilled teams. With this, Square Enix expects annual savings of more than ¥3 billion.
Square Enix is also planning on closing its overseas game development studios, and instead consolidate its development teams to its Japan-based offices. This is being done in order to “strengthen development capabilities from a Group-wide perspective and to optimise resource allocation for maximising the value generated by IPs.”
In the same progress report, Square Enix had also announced that it was taking part in joint research with the Matsuo-Iwasawa lab at the University of Tokyo for the purposes of exploring the use of AI-based tools to streamline and improve the efficiency of quality assurance and debugging processes in game development. The research is expected to be completed by the end of 2027, and will involve teams of engineers from both the lab and Square Enix itself.
The progress report itself was part of keeping shareholders in the loop about the processes that Square Enix had first announced as its “three year reboot” plans back in May. Among other things, the plans involve making Square Enix capable of more consistent releases of high-quality games on a yearly basis.
