News

GREE offers voluntary retirement to 200 employees, closes Osaka office

Getting leaner and leaner

GREE offers voluntary retirement to 200 employees, closes Osaka office
Social gaming giant GREE is to offer 200 employees voluntary retirement and close its office in Osaka in a bid to streamline its operations and boost profitability.

The news – reported by Tokyo-based consultant Serkan Toto – comes as GREE continues to contend with a sticky social gaming market.

Its once square battle with rival DeNA has been complicated by an attack from chat platforms such as KakaoTalk, which have successfully integrated games into their services.

Growth no more

The voluntary retirement equates to around 11 percent of GREE's total workforce of 1,762 people, claims Toto, with 30 going at the firm's Osaka office.

It's not clear whether these 30 are included in the reported figure of 200, though it's believed some of those working at the Osaka office were offered jobs at GREE's headquarters in Tokyo.

2013 has already seen GREE close its office in the UK to refocus its western operations on the US, where it is based in San Fransisco – although 25 jobs were let go there in December 2012.

GREE's Asian operations outside of Japan have also suffered as a result of the company growing too fast, with 120 jobs having been lost in Beijing back in May in order to "optimise our global game development operations through a process of selection and concentration."

[source: Serkan Toto]

With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.