No, Nintendo layoffs aren’t happening at Mario Club, despite what the internet says

Rumors started floating around that Nintendo subsidiary Mario Club was laying off people, and it turns out that’s simply not true. Mario Club is a support studio that handles quality assurance for Nintendo and has credits for work on the likes of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD and Super Mario Wonder.

Eurogamer reached out to Nintendo about the rumors, and Nintendo responded with a brief statement of denial.

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“We have confirmed with Mario Club Co., Ltd. that the rumoured information in the report is untrue,” the statement reads, without clarifying whether it was some or all of the information in the report.

The initial report, which says Mario Club laid off 150 of its 400 employees, came from from Japanese site LeakPress. LeakPress claims to report insider information about the Japanese game development industry, albeit without author credits or any way to verify if what the publication reports is true.

Normally, that would be a red flag for savvy forum users and reputable journalists, but the story took root anyway. Part of the reason people believed it may stem from the fact that LeakPress reported conditions similar to those that, allegedly, existed at Bandai Namco, which was said to have forced employees into rooms with nothing to do in a bid to make them quit voluntarily. 

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LeakPress also said employees were forbidden salary increases regardless of performance and were divided into groups such as “employees who do their work,” “employees who cause trouble,” and “employees who hold their colleagues back.”