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Sega of America is reportedly set to lay off 61 employees, amounting to more than 10% of its total staff

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
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As spotted by a ResetEra user, the layoffs were listed on What Layoff, an automated X account which lists verified layoffs as they’re announced.

The account noted that, according to a California WARN notice, Sega of America “will lay off 61 employees on March 8, 2024”.

California’s WARN Act (which stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) legally requires companies to give 60 days notice before a mass layoff.
VGC has confirmed via the State of California’s Employment Development Department that Sega of America has given notice of plans for two separate layoffs of 49 staff and 12 staff, both of which will be made effective on March 8.

According to numerous employer information resources, Sega of America has roughly 440 staff, meaning a layoff of this nature would theoretically affect around 13% of its workforce.

Sega has yet to officially announce the layoffs – VGC has contacted the company for a statement.

 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Well, you don't really need the regional branches themselves if you can just work with the development, localization and marketing studios remotely anyway (assuming this doesn't include the staff numbers of studios Sega owns like Creative Assembly). Sucks but it is what it is (if this is it of course).
 
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BlueLyria

Member
Well, you don't really need the regional branches themselves if you can just work with the development, localization and marketing studios remotely anyway (assuming this doesn't include the staff numbers of studios Sega owns like Creative Assembly). Sucks but it is what it is (if this is it of course).
Ok but to be fair CA did deserve downsizing after Hyenas and total war drama
 
Management kinda failed over the covid years at many companies. Everyone hired a bunch of people that then seem not to lead to planned results at all, but rather delays delays delays, everything taking forever to make, despite all sorts of easier tools and scans and AI, and now everyone gets rid of their fat. Who t f thought hiring aimlessly was a good idea in the first place.
 
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Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Ok but to be fair CA did deserve downsizing after Hyenas and total war drama
Nah, devs just do as they're told, like we saw in the Insomniac leak where they have a schedule to keep for a whole decade ahead, restructure from the top making these decisions when fails like that are done.
 
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FeralEcho

Member
More than the layoffs I'm genuinely surprised that there's so few employees in total for such an important branch.Less than 600 employees for a company like SEGA?

Maybe they should do some hires instead of layoffs lmao
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midnightAI

Member
I never did understand the use of percentages other than to try and make it sound better than it actually is or worse than it actually is.

Like, company X is only laying off 10% of it's workforce (even though they are actually making 10,000 people unemployed because they employ 100,000 people)
Company Y is laying off a huge 25% of it's workforce (even though the entire workforce is only 20 people so only 5 are being let go)
 

Darsxx82

Member
More than the layoffs I'm genuinely surprised that there's so few employees in total for such an important branch.Less than 600 employees for a company like SEGA?

Maybe they should do some hires instead of layoffs lmao
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It is SEGA AMERICA not global SEGA.

439 employees are enough for several AAA Studios in America alone. Without taking into account that the majority of SEGA projects are of the AA type and that many of them are commissioned by independent Studios.

That said, SEGA has a market price of "only" 1.5-2B including rights to large IPs. It is still a company with great relevance in the industry, but it is certainly far from being one of the great companies in the sector.

Regarding the layoffs..... It is clear that it is an industry adjustment process that affects all its participants and that 2024 aims to be worse than the already disastrous 2023.
 

FeralEcho

Member
It is SEGA AMERICA not global SEGA.

439 employees are enough for several AAA Studios in America alone. Without taking into account that the majority of SEGA projects are of the AA type and that many of them are commissioned by independent Studios.

That said, SEGA has a market price of "only" 1.5-2B including rights to large IPs. It is still a company with great relevance in the industry, but it is certainly far from being one of the great companies in the sector.

Regarding the layoffs..... It is clear that it is an industry adjustment process that affects all its participants and that 2024 aims to be worse than the already disastrous 2023.
I know it's just this branch but still ...Insomniac for example has like 300 people and it's not a publisher like SEGA,it just seems odd.
 
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