Report: Nintendo of America Laying Off Around 120 Contractors - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 April 2024 / 3,738 Views
Nintendo of America is reportedly laying off around 120 contractors as part massive restructuring of its testing department, according to Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach who spoke with four current and former employees. Some contractors will be brought on as full-time employees.
"Nintendo of America (NOA) has reorganized its Product Testing functions to drive greater global integration in game development efforts," said a Nintendo spokesperson in an email sent to Kotaku. "The changes will also better align NOA with interregional testing procedures and operations.
"These changes will involve some contractor assignments ending, as well as the creation of a significant number of new full-time employee positions. For all assignments that are ending, the contractors’ agencies, with NOA’s support, will offer severance packages and provide assistance during their transition.
"For those contractor associates who will be leaving us, we are tremendously grateful for the important contributions they’ve made to our business, and we extend our heartfelt thanks for their hard work and service to Nintendo."
Three contractors did state these layoffs have occurred during a "lull" in Nintendo of America's testing department. They said there have been no new major first-party games that are currently being tested. They also aren't aware of anyone with hands-on time with the Switch 2.
My understanding is roughly 120 contractor positions have been eliminated at Nintendo of America, though the company is messaging this internally as a move to "better integrate" testing across offices rather than as a cost cutting measure.
— AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) March 27, 2024
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
More Articles
They're not laying off contractors. That's not how contracting works. Only employees can be laid off.
These contractors might be laid off by somebody else, but not by Nintendo.
Contractor in this context means someone hired as a self employed worker, not someone working for a contracted 3rd party. It is/was used to bypass benefits accorded to regular employee like paid overtime, sick days... and force employee into uncompensated overtime in rush period where refusal to work would result in breach of contracts.
It was used industry wide quite extensively in the past especially with QA department.
I'm glad Nintendo is putting an end to their use of such vestigial malpractice but the article is correct, Nintendo did laid them off, those workers just didn't self fired themselves.
My theory: Hundreds of workers decided to fire themselves and blame it on Nintendo. (They’re upset that Mother 3 wasn’t localized…this is happening specifically in America after all.)
Seems likely
I understand what you are saying. But, you have given your own definition to the term "layoff". There is no difference whether someone works for a large company or they are a company of 1. They are not employees of Nintendo, therefore it is impossible for them to be laid off by Nintendo (using the common definition o f that term).
Also, my understanding is that at least some of these contractors were employed by a third party. They were not all sole proprietors.
LOl, you're the one making a definition of layoff that excludes contracted workers being discharged.
The term does apply just as well as with any regular employee.
But if you truly believe otherwise we can ask Trunks to change the title to 'Nintendo forced 120 companies to shutdown' but it does sound quite a bit worse XD
Also, my understanding is that at least some of these contractors were employed by a third party.
That is not what is reported
They were not all sole proprietors.
None were proprietors of an entity here, those were not a consultant or actual independent contractors, Nintendo was the entity in control.
It would be interesting to know how many of those contractors will get to be employed by Nintendo directly.
This could be a case of Nintendo choosing to stop working through a contractor agency. A contractor agency needs to make profit too, so employing people directly would be more affordable for Nintendo.
That sucks in 2 ways, for the people who are contractors and the no new "major games". Makes me think that the Switch 2 or whatever might come out later then expected.
I don't think so,..... it just means a year or so, without many new games (from them). This is typical nintendo (and others), you save up a few new bangers, for the next gen, so it doesn't launch without games. This last year, apart from whats already announced, 3rd party will have to carry.
no shot Nintendo would allow independently hired contractors playtest — let alone even know — about the Switch successor or it’s games at this current moment. That’s absolutely something which is being confined to Nintendo’s Japanese HQ.
Did you miss the part of the article were the Nintendo spokesperson said that the contractors that are being laid off are testers?
no, I did not miss that part. There’s such thing as different divisions of playtesters: Chances are, the independently employed playtesters in North America aren’t the playtesters running through Switch successor titles.
When the test team is being laid off, it normally means less demand or huge dev delays. Considering that this is happening shortly before major hardware release they either got hardware side long sorted and there's simply not much software to be tested OR the hardware is nowhere near ready and most of the team is just passively waiting for the demand. Either way, it's bad. Considering that they kept some testers, I'd say that they have some kind of delay as you would want to keep your core test team close to developers (in early stages of development) for reviews, white box / unit testing. Then you'd bring the contractors back, once you move to the next phase of testing (integration/user), to keep cost in check. Or it's all done and dusted, they over hired to accelerate the progress and now Nintendo artificially delays the release, however this strategy comes with a significant cost ... and it rarely happens nowadays. There's also fourth possibility, that they simply expanded the test team in different location, but without the hiring data, it's impossible to tell.
Even Nintendo. Fuck me.
little bit of a dishonest way to dismiss the nuance of the situation. Devs are different from contractors, and given Nintendo’s culture of not typically firing workers, it’s not entirely unreasonable for one to suspect that maybe there’s more to this than just cost-cutting.
