NOE confirms termination of 190 contract workers in addition to the 120 full-time employees who are losing their jobs as the company moves its headquarters and begins outsourcing QA & localization.
Back in June, Nintendo announced plans to relocate its European headquarters and lay off 130 people in the process. Today, Kotaku reports that Nintendo wasn't telling the whole story, as the company was also quietly terminating its contracts with 190 temporary workers who served in its European localization and testing departments. These people were contracted by Nintendo through a leasing agency and thus weren't technically laid off, but it's worth noting that -- according to Kotaku -- many of them had worked exclusively at Nintendo for years. Going forward, Nintendo of Europe plans to outsource its localization and testing, as evinced by the following statement given to Kotaku and Gamasutra by a Nintendo of Europe representative:
"As previously communicated in June 2014, approximately 130 permanent employees will be released by Nintendo of Europe (Germany) at the end of August 2014 as part of a set of measures to better enable the European business to adapt to the rapidly changing business environment. As a separate measure, Nintendo of Europe is reorganizing its European Localization Development (ELD) department, where it currently uses a number of temporary agency workers in translation and testing activities, in order to increase flexibility and cost-efficiency in the long-term. It is intended that there will be an increase in outsourcing future translation and test activities to third-party companies on an as-needed basis, and very sadly this has meant having ended the contracts of 190 temporary agency workers, who were formally notified of this decision in June 2014."
You May Also Like
.png?width=300&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
