Sekai Project, famous for bringing adult visual novels to the West, has recently confirmed in a Kickstarter post for the upcoming Tokyo Chronos that it has laid off some of its staff. The official reason given by the company has been restructuring. While there was originally uncertainty about whether the layoffs had happened, tweets from previous Sekai employees have now confirmed the situation.
For the uninitiated, Sekai Project was responsible for bringing the (in)famous Nekopara to the Switch recently. Its stable contains a whole host of ecchi and romance-oriented games. Because of this, the publisher has gained a cult following in the West. The recent layoffs have left some fans concerned about the state of the projects that Sekai announced earlier this year.
While Sekai Project was quick to reassure backers of its Tokyo Chronos Kickstarter that the game’s release wouldn’t be affected, the company has been silent on other fronts. In anticipation of Sakura-Con 2018, Sekai Project announced a bunch of new titles that it wanted to share, including the hack-and-slash title Mahou Arms. A product marking such a huge departure from its typical visual novel fare drew interest, but now many are left pondering the future of these projects. With major layoffs happening at the company, will it be able to deliver on what has promised to fans so far?
There has now been an official statement released from the team regarding the layoffs, which seems to indicate that they were isolated to one particular department. Furthermore, CEO Christopher Ling has given an update on some of the titles that Sekai Project is currently working on. While the statement mentions Tokyo Chronos along with the highly-anticipated My Girlfriend is a Mermaid?!, that isn’t an exhaustive list of the company’s current projects.
For now, projects like Mahou Arms appear to be in limbo until we hear anything further. Fans can only hope that it will continue to deliver the visual novel projects that it has become famous for, and that those who were laid off find new homes at other great publishers.
