The Japanese Kadokawa Corporation is making a generous gesture. She is going to distribute promotional options worth 5.3 billion yen, or about $35 million at the current exchange rate, to employees of her subsidiary studio FromSoftware.
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The initiative has already been approved by the Kadokawa Board of Directors. Now it remains for the corporation to get approval at the FromSoftware shareholders' meeting.
Kadokawa is going to issue 465 options. It is assumed that all current FromSoftware employees will receive them: both top management and ordinary employees.
Kadokawa said that she expects to use options to raise the morale of FromSoftware employees, as well as "encourage them to contribute to the growth of the company's performance and corporate value in the medium and long term." Ultimately, this will have a good effect on the results of the gaming division of the corporation and Kadokawa as a whole.
According to analyst Serkan Toto from Kantan Games, the corporation also hopes to keep FromSoftware developers in this way. The fact is that recently a number of large Japanese gaming companies like Capcom, Bandai Namco and Nintendo have raised salaries, so Kadokawa has reason to fear an outflow of personnel.
Toto added that in Japan, companies rarely give options to employees. Especially big ones like Kadokawa.
If FromSoftware shareholders support the initiative, developers will be able to receive options as early as April 2024. However, they will not be able to exchange stock options until July 2025. The options will expire on July 31, 2033.