Recently, the gaming giant Square Enix announced that it is undergoing a large-scale restructuring, accompanied by a round of large-scale layoffs, which is expected to affect up to 100 employees.The layoffs are mainly concentrated in its distribution departments in overseas regions such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

According to the company's internal presentation documents, the core of this restructuring is to shrink the overseas distribution territory and focus resources more on local game development in Japan.This means that some IP previously managed by overseas studios will be transferred to global integrated management.

In order to implement this strategic transformation of "from quantitative change to qualitative change", Square Enix plans to significantly streamline its high-definition game publishing department from 11 to 4.The company expects the restructuring to incur restructuring charges of 11.8 billion yen in the fiscal year ending in March 2026.

Square Enix’s layoffs are not an isolated case; they are just the latest wave of “layoffs” in the game industry in 2025.Just last week, Amazon Games canceled the highly anticipated "Rings" MMORPG project due to layoffs; Funcom Studio, which successfully launched "Dune: Awakening", also celebrated while laying off employees; and King, the developer of "Candy Crush Saga", was exposed to using AI tools to replace some employees.

It is worth noting that on the same day it announced layoffs, Square Enix also announced its ambitious AI plan: the goal is to have generative AI complete 70% of game quality assurance (QA) and debugging work by 2027.The company has launched joint research with the Matsuo Laboratory of the University of Tokyo to improve development efficiency.