The shitstorm at Bandai Namco just won’t stop. After the absolute trainwreck that was Unknown 9: Awakening which managed to peak at a pathetic 285 players on PC the Japanese company is now cleaning up another mess.
Now, Bandai Namco has announced that their failing Online division is getting the axe. Starting April 1, 2025, Bandai Namco Online will be officially merged into Bandai Namco Entertainment, with the latter, of course, being the one to survive. In classic “absorption-type” mergers, the parent company swipes everything—assets, liabilities, and all leaving the absorbed company dead in the water.
The last time we discussed Bandai Namco’s online division, it was amid the fallout from the termination of Blue Protocol, an open-world action RPG that was initially positioned as a competitor to Genshin Impact. While Bandai Namco may have had good intentions for the game, ESG and DEI initiatives played a significant role in hindering the MMO’s success.
By June, Bandai Namco’s online division was grappling with insolvency after posting a ¥8.201 billion yen loss, fueled by repeated failures and the shutdown of online-centric games like Gundam Evolution, a hero shooter based upon the iconic Gundam franchise in the style of Overwatch and, of course, Blue Protocol.
The partnership with Amazon Games for Blue Protocol introduced a host of issues, including region-specific diversity mandates.
These efforts led to noticeable disparities between the Japanese and English versions, with character designs in the Western release altered to feature more inclusive and politically correct depictions, swapping characters for those with darker skin tones in supposedly identical sequences in trailers. Additionally, Bandai Namco implemented significant censorship under ESG pressures, toning down female attire alongside removing an option for jiggle physics during the character creation screen.
Despite being showcased at the 2022 Game Awards with plans for a Western release, the English version of Blue Protocol never saw the light of day. Instead, the Western-specific censorship was controversially imposed on the Japanese version when the game launched on PlayStation consoles.
Although Blue Protocol initially drew a substantial player base, peaking at over 200,000 concurrent players in Japan, it failed to retain its domestic audience. Its reputation in the West was doomed from the start.
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Facing significant losses, Bandai Namco made the decision to abandon Blue Protocol, terminating the project before the English version could even launch. In August, the company announced that the game would officially shut down on January 18, 2025. Now, the division responsible for its failure, Bandai Namco Online, is set to be dissolved.
According to their statement, this absorption-type merger with Bandai Namco Entertainment aims to “respond to the recent changes in the game business environment and strengthen the overall structure of the digital business sector.” However, Bandai Namco’s gaming division has been struggling financially for awhile now, compounded by a string of failures.
Beyond the collapse of live-service projects like Blue Protocol and Gundam Evolution, high-profile flops, such as Unknown 9: Awakening, have added to their woes.
Even the massive success of DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO, which sold over three million copies in a single day, hasn’t been enough to balance the scales. In today’s volatile gaming landscape, a single commercial failure can easily wipe out the profits made elsewhere, leaving even the biggest hits unable to cover the damage.
The situation is dire. The studio behind Unknown 9: Awakening began layoffs just a month after its poorly received release. Meanwhile, Bandai Namco is reportedly pressuring its Japanese employees into “expulsion rooms,” isolating them from development teams with no assignments, effectively forcing resignations to avoid severance payouts.
On top of this, the company has canceled numerous projects in development, reflecting mounting concerns over financial instability and pressure to deliver commercially successful titles to market.
Many of these issues stem from ESG-driven diversity and inclusivity mandates, which have led to the censorship of femininity and the erasure of gendered terms, replaced by ridiculous “body type” nonsense. These initiatives don’t actually benefit the so-called “marginalized” groups they claim to support. Instead, they stifle creative freedom, forcing developers to bow to radical ideological demands under the guise of profit-driven compliance.
Moving forward, Bandai Namco Entertainment will take over the remnants of Bandai Namco Online’s live-service projects, assuming all customer contracts and associated responsibilities as part of the consolidation effort.
