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Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Disgraced Game Developer Yuji Naka Arrested for Suspicions of Insider Trading... AGAIN!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I couldn't possibly pass this up. And he's even dumber than we thought!

Hopefully you remember last month's brilliant article, Disgraced Game Developer Yuji Naka Arrested for Suspicions of Insider Trading. I had a LOT of fun creating it, and you'd have a lot of fun experiencing it. I didn't expect a sequel, especially not so soon, but here we are.

According to this Japanese defence attorney's site, the maximum amount of time you'll be held in detention in Japan is about 23 days until the prosecutor's office decides whether to indict you or not. It seems like between getting some time on the outside and... today, BALAN WONDERWORLD director Yuji Naka was arrested yet again. (So was Taisuke Sazaki.) You (or Lheticus specifically) might think that Butch and Cassidy are bad at not getting caught by the police, but Yuji Naka is (back) behind bars, making this a twice-occurring event in less than a month—this makes him even more inept than emotionally insecure cartoon criminals. And for the same crime as before: insider trading. I find this absolutely hysterical.

Now, he didn't go and commit a brand-new as-of-late-2022 insider trading crime (that we know of), but rather Japanese authorities have uncovered an instance they didn't know about regarding the development of FINAL FANTASY VII: The First Soldier. This was still while Yuji Naka was employed at SQUARE ENIX.


FINAL FANTASY VII: The First Soldier is a crappy free-to-play battle royale mobile game that released a year ago, on November 17, 2021. It was so bad that it's getting shut down on January 11, 2023. Like the first accusation surrounding (the far more successful mobile game) Dragon Quest Tact and Aiming Inc, SQUARE ENIX had collaborated with another allegedly mobile-proficient publicly traded game developer that began with A, Ateam Inc., in order to co-develop this mobile title.

Just like before, Yuji Naka is accused of learning about this developer working on a high-profile mobile game with SQUARE ENIX prior to an official announcement (which occurred February 25, 2021), and then buying many millions of yen worth of shares of that company prior to the announcement. While Yuji Naka only purchased 10,000 shares in Aiming, he purchased far more—120,000 shares—in Ateam. No one has reported when Yuji Naka is being accused to have purchased the shares—just that this happened before February 25, 2021. Like Aiming before them, Ateam released a statement that no members of Ateam did anything wrong (and no one is accusing them of such). As of writing this article, the most recent statement that SQUARE ENIX has put out is still the one on November 17 about the first time Yuji Naka got arrested. Perhaps they don't want him to keep dominating all of their headlines, and the first news release ought to handle SQUARE ENIX's stance towards their former employee's stupidity.

I continually called Yuji Naka stupid in the previous article. Let's look at his big stock pick this time:


Ateam Inc Final Fantasy VII First Soldier stock price before and after release Yuji Naka insider trading
There is a very clear point where he needed to sell. We don't know if he did that.


Remember, Yuji Naka bought 12 times the number of shares in Ateam with FINAL FANTASY VII: The First Soldier than Aiming with Dragon Quest Tact. (Not a fair comparison, since the two companies have differently priced shares—Yuji Naka paid 2.8 million yen in Aiming and 144.7 million yen in Ateam. Is that a stark enough difference for you?) This should indicate that Yuji Naka had far more faith in the failed FINAL FANTASY VII-based mobile game than the still-successful Dragon Quest-based mobile game. This was laughably misplaced faith, and even he should've known that just from the concept. A mobile FINAL FANTASY VII battle royale? Really? I don't see how that's supposed to be appealing. Yuji Naka did, however, and waaaaaaay more than the Dragon Quest tactical gacha. Still, he could've made a big profit off selling Ateam shares if he bought sufficiently early enough and sold those shares at the right time. Of course, if he waited until the release of the game to sell (or never sold them at all)... then he'd actually lose money based on how much Ateam's value catastrophically fell right when FINAL FANTASY VII: The First Soldier came out. The right (financially, not morally or legally) thing to do would have been to put the money into Aiming and disregard Ateam!

But making bad decisions based off lack of sense is in-line with Yuji Naka's bizarre development and life philosophies anyway, based on BALAN WONDERWORLD being so awful. Maybe he'll stay in jail this time. Perhaps he'll confess to any other misdeeds he's done (if these allegations are true).

Speaking of those two SQUARE ENIX franchises, Dragon Quest Treasures releases this Friday, while Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion releases on December 13, or this coming Tuesday.



Yuji Naka is innocent until proven guilty! And Ludwig hopes that Japan's prosecutors prove such a thing. Let him know in the comments section if you believe that Ludwig is relying too much on hindsight to realise that insider trading with Aiming shares based on Dragon Quest Tact would be far more intelligent than insider trading with Ateam shares based on FINAL FANTASY VII: The First Soldier.


Yuji Naka got his first day in court and admitted to the insider trading.
Yuji Naka has been sentenced in court for his insider trading.

4 comments :

  1. Evidently, Yuji Naka is a big fan of the expression "Twice as Nice".

    It'd be a nice change to say that the gaming industry has more insider trading crimes than it does sex crimes, but that would be a lie. Both of course, would be still be crimes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...

      You're not foreshadowing something, are you?

      Delete
    2. Not intentionally, but if something big happens I wouldn't be surprised. The gaming industry seems to be competing with Hollywood in the worst kind of competition.

      Delete
    3. Well, Geoff Keighley is certainly competing on making a bad award show with the only entertainment being unintended events.

      Delete

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