Earlier this week, Japanese outlet Leakpress published a report claiming that 150 employees of Nintendo debugging subsidiary Mario Club Co., Ltd. were being laid off across various teams. Fortunately, Nintendo has today released a statement to Eurogamer to set the record straight.
The layoff reports are “untrue,” Nintendo’s statement clarifies. By the sounds of it, Nintendo has corroborated this information with Mario Club, where no employees have lost their jobs.
It’s short and to the point, but here’s Nintendo’s full statement (via Eurogamer):
We have confirmed with Mario Club Co., Ltd. that the rumoured information in the report is untrue.
The initial Leakpress rumour claimed that Mario Club was laying off its employees in a manner slightly different to the “oidashi beya” — expulsion rooms — that Bandai Namco was accused of using amidst its reported layoffs earlier this month.
Fortunately, as Nintendo’s statement clarifies, this isn’t true for the subsidiary. Mario Club has assisted Nintendo on several first-party titles in recent years, including Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Princess Peach: Showtime!, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD.
While the Mario Club rumours turned out to be false, 2024 continues to be a terrible year for industry layoffs across both large and small teams. Earlier this month, League of Legends developer Riot Games announced its second wave of company layoffs this year, and the entire Surgent Studios team was put on redundancy notice as the Tales of Kenzera: ZAU studio seeks funding for its next project.