Level-5 reportedly ceasing North American operations

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Isaac Todd
October 13, 2020
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In a report released by GamesIndustry.biz, the North American offices of developer Level-5 are being run by a “skeleton crew”, having laid off most of their staff in 2019.

Level-5 are most known these days for the Yo-kai Watch and Professor Layton series, though they also worked on RPGs like Dark Cloud and Rogue Galaxy back on the PS2.

GamesIndustry.biz’s sources state that only a couple of employees remain at both Level-5 International America and their spin-off office, Level-5 Abby. One of their sources also suggested that future Level-5 games may not be getting released outside of Japan.

While news of closures in the gaming industry is never a good thing, in the case of Level-5’s international efforts, it doesn’t come as the biggest surprise. Most of their most well known releases outside of Japan were handled by other publishers — most notably Nintendo. Even Yo-kai Watch 4, the first major console release for the series, has not been localised a year after its Japanese Switch release.

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