Yuji Naka Sentenced w/ Prison, Probation and Fines in Insider Trading Case

[Moonface]

For anyone interested, I just saw news that Yuji Naka has been arrested by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, as one of the latest arrests to be made in relation to the insider trading case involving information on development of a new Dragon Quest game.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office today arresteda new suspect, Yuji Naka, 57, a game creator, in an insider trading case involving information on the development of a new "Dragon Quest" game.

According to the announcement by the Special Investigation Department, the suspect, who was an employee of the game company Square Enix (Square Enix), learned important information about "Dragon Quest Tact" which was being jointly developed by Square Enix and the online game production company Aiming, around late January 2020.

Before the information was announced, Naka allegedly purchased approximately 10,000 shares of Aiming stock for approximately 2.8 million yen. He was arrested for insider trading under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law.

The two suspects, Taisuke Sasaki, 38, a former employee of SQUANI, and his acquaintance Fumiaki Suzuki, 40, were also arrested yesterday on suspicion of insider trading.

All three are believed to have purchased the shares in the belief that the announcement of information regarding "Dragon Quest Tact" would boost the price of Aiming's stock.

I don't know of the other two people who are named in the quote as being arrested already. As for Naka, I feel like he was probably already avoidable for the disaster that was Balan, so I would expect this to kill any chance he could have of working at any game development company going forward.

[ShiraNoMai]

That's immensely unfortunate, especially considering how highly he was regarded. Everything more recently started falling apart around him and now he's resorting to this kind of methodology to keep afloat. What a tragedy.

[Moonface]

That's immensely unfortunate, especially considering how highly he was regarded. Everything more recently started falling apart around him and now he's resorting to this kind of methodology to keep afloat. What a tragedy.

Has there been anyone else in game development who's had a really big fall from grace like this? I can't really think of an individual who has; the only things coming to mind are studios or publishers that went downhill but those aren't really the same type of fall.

[ShiraNoMai]

I'd guess folks like Peter Molyneux, maybe Randy Pitchford? Peter's just a weird guy that began the "overpromising, under-delivering" trend; Randy, well, he might as well have always been a piece of shit but it only recently came to light.

[Moonface]

I don't feel like anything Pitchford has done has really ended up in putting his name through the mud though, especially considering that anything he did do didn't actually affect him at all. I wonder if most people even remember any of the negative press about him that came out at the end of the 2010's.
I was going to pitch Fish (the guy who developed Fez) as someone who went from a high to a sudden low due to his departure from the game industry after the success of Fez due to an argument on Twitter, but I just read that he came back anyway and helped out as a designer of a game released in 2016 and worked on the bootup screen for Super Nt. His story feels more like the guy who made Flappy Bird where they end up bowing out for their own sanity and then just keep a low profile doing whatever else after the fact, rather than going out in a blaze of controversy.

[Moonface]

Yuji Naka Sentenced with Prison, Probation and Fines in Insider Trading Case
As an update to this matter, Yuji Naka has been sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison and 4 years probation, as well as a fines of 2 million and 171 million yen: https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/1e460e...182404741f
The probation came about due to a request from his defense last month to have the fines reduced and for a suspended sentence, of which only the latter was granted.

Also this article is apparently not accessible to people in the EU, so just in case anyone wants a brief rundown on the article, Wikipedia summarized up the overall story quite well:

On November 17, 2022, Naka was arrested by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office and charged with violating the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act of 2006. The Public Prosecutors Office accused him of insider trading; Naka bought 10,000 shares of the developer Aiming before its game Dragon Quest Tact was announced to the public. Two other former Square Enix employees were also arrested, alleged to have bought 162,000 shares between December 2019 and February 2020 for approximately 47.2 million yen.

On December 7, Naka was arrested again, accused of having purchased 144.7 million yen of shares of the developer ATeam before their game Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier was announced. He was later indicted on insider trading charges by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. Naka admitted his guilt in March 2023. On June 1, prosecutors asked for a sentence of two and a half years in prison and a combined fine of 172.5 million yen. On July 7, a Tokyo District Court judge handed Naka a sentence of two years and six months in prison, suspended for four years. The judge ordered Naka to forfeit 171 million yen and pay a 2 million yen fine.