According to Japanese news site fnn, Sonic the Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka has been arrested for insider trading involving the Dragon Quest Tact mobile game. According to the news site, Yuji Naka used insider information while working at Square-Enix about (then) unannounced “Dragon Quest Tact” mobile game which was being developed jointly by Square-Enix and Aiming for mobile devices.
Yuji Naka allegedly used this information to purchase over 10,000 shares of Aiming stock for approximately 2.8 million yen (about 20k USD). Yuji Naka left SEGA way back in 2006 to form Prope, he would then join Square Enix in 2018 and then left after Balan Wonderworld bombed. Yuji Naka even had heated words for Square Enix claiming they don’t value games.
For now we wait to see more details. Quite a journey that Yuji Naka has taken in the last few years.
Ad:
That is insane…
NHK World had reported about two other employees arrested for this:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20221117_29/
He’s under investigation at the moment which explains why he hasn’t been on Facebook and Twitter lately (he’s usually on every other day most of the time, near every day), while Square-Enix has already given their statement on him and the two others, so that’s as far as we know so far. I know he said earlier in the year that he had legal hassle from Square-Enix as he put a charge to them which was pending in court.
Hopefully he settles this and moves on, it’s a shame the direction his career has taken in recent years since his 22 years at Sega (1984-2006), what with the whole mess that surrounded the Balan Wonder world fiasco with Arzest also, and how he designed it as a mobile game initially and this fundamentally had a negative effect on the end product and the concept of the initial mechanics and philosophy of the game.
Since then he has released his own independent mobile title 2048SHOT via his company – Prope, which you can still see on Google Play.
he is a pimp
Pimptastic.