SEGA has now announced that they are voluntary halting shipments and pulling the game from Japanese PSN following the news taht in-game actor Pierre Taki has been arrested for using cocaine. That’s right, SEGA has a super strong stance against cocaine, that is why Yakuza 4 re-release on PS4 had to recast the actor for Masayoshi Tanimura, the original actor was allegedly using cocaine as well.
SEGA said in a press release:
“Sega has received the arrest reports and are currently confirming the facts, but for the time being, we will voluntarily refrain from shipments and digital sales of [Judgment], as well as from things like posting the product’s homepage. We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause for customers, as well as the parties involved.”
The thing is Judgement came out in Japan last year, back in Decemeber. Now it makes me wonder if SEGA Japan will try to halt the release in America until they digitally recast the actor? What a mess and I have no idea why its SEGA’s responsibility to go through all this because an actor used some drugs. Who cares? Now we might have to miss out on his performance because of all this…
[Source: Gematsu]
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Makes no sense at all.
Japan’s laws and culture are really strict against drugs. SEGA doesn’t want its image associated with this guy and that’s completely understandable. Every other actor in Japan who is caught using drugs has his career immediately ended for good. Of course, nobody cares about that over here (myself included), but SEGA may delay the game in the West because of this, not because they care, but because SEGA of Japan will ask that, which totally sucks, but again, it’s understandable.
That’s not necessarily true. Look up Zatoichi actor Shintaru Katsu busted numerous times. Never ended his career.
In the west we really find this kind of thing silly. Hundreds of people worked on this title and a delay only results in a loss of investment. Guessing they will re-record this mans part. Sad thing is the new dialog may not be as good as the original. Talk about a over reaction. I know the rest of the world could care less if this guy did drugs, but it would be interesting to see a Japanese poll on the subject. Might be a case of tradition not reflecting the actual sentiment of the Japanese people.
But isn’t it like a rule to dismiss any actor who is in trouble with something like this?