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Sega of America laying off 61 staff

Sega of America laying off 61 staff

The US arm of Japanese giant Sega is making 61 members of staff redundant.

As spotted by the WhatLayoff Twitter bot, the company filed a WARN notice with California's Employment Development Department saying it intended to lay off 61 workers. These are split across Sega of America's Irvine offices; 12 at 140 Progress and 49 in its Oak Canyon Road outpost. Incidentally, these are a four-minute drive from each other.

The AEGIS union has confirmed on social media that these cuts are related to Sega's plans to "phase out" temporary workers by February 2024. These roles were mostly in QA and localisation.

"Through our union efforts, we’ve been able to more than double the number of saved jobs, and to offer severance to our temp workers," AEGIS wrote.

"This, however, does not take away from the fact that many of our coworkers are being laid off in a decision we believe will have a negative impact on the working conditions of those who remain with the company, and in the quality of our future games.

"In spite of this, we remain committed to fighting for our coworkers, and for the betterment of our industry. In the face of mass layoffs that continue to happen across gaming companies, we stand united and in solidarity with those affected."

PCGamesInsider.biz has reached out to Sega of America for comment.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.