We’ve all heard plenty of stories about poor working conditions for those in the video game industry – perhaps most recently with Team17 – so it’s lovely to see companies taking positive actions to improve the lives of the people who create the games we love.
Bandai Namco has moved to increase the base salary of its Japanese staff as part of a wider initiative to ‘Connect with Fans’. The publisher has stated that it will boost the monthly earnings for its employees by ¥50,000 ($435), bringing their base monthly salary up from ¥232,000 ($2000) to ¥290,000 ($2500).
The publisher is hoping that the change will “improve workability by stabilising employee income”. This will supposedly help foster “active participation” from its staff to drive the ‘Connect with Fans’ vision; we suspect this is a fancy way of saying they want to keep staff attrition down.
In addition, Bandai Namco is also introducing a new ‘Activity Based Working’ scheme, which allows employees to choose the time and place of where they’d like to work. Such a move is in keeping with other major publishers, who have introduced permanent work-from-home programmes in the wake of Covid-19.
Both schemes are due to go live for employees in April 2022.
