Naka is said to have bought stock in Dragon Quest developer based on interior information even as at Square Enix
Yuji Naka, the co-author of Sonic the Hedgehog and previous head of developer Sonic crew, has been arrested for insider trading in Tokyo. The information, first reported by the Japanese news web page FNN, has been corroborated with the aid of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in an English-language report.
Naka is said to have bought inventory in developer Aiming in early 2020, primarily based on inside information that it’d be developing a Dragon Quest mobile game, Dragon Quest Tact. At the time, publisher Rectangle Enix’s partnership with Aiming at the game was not public, and Naka became operating at Rectangle Enix on unwell-fated platformer Balan Wonderworld.
The special investigations unit of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors office, which made the arrest, said that Naka had offered 10,000 stocks in Aiming for approximately 2.8 million yen ($20,000) after mastering Dragon Quest Tact in late January 2020, earlier than the announcement of the sport the subsequent month. The belief is that he was hoping to benefit from a boom in the proportion rate after the statement and release of the sport — despite the fact that based totally on contemporary reporting, it’s no longer clean if he did sell the shares.
Naka’s arrest Friday follows those of two other former square Enix employees an afternoon earlier on the same fees. Taisuke Sazaki and Fumiaki Suzuki are stated through investigators to have sold forty-seven million yen ($336,000) well worth of Aiming stock in overdue 2019 and early 2020, after Suzuki learned of Dragon Quest Tact’s life in November 2019.
In line with the Asahi Shimbun, Sazaki and Suzuki bought their Aiming shares after the declaration of Dragon Quest Tact in February 2020, profiting from the song of tens of millions of yen. The paper’s sources also say that Sazaki became a member of the joint development group operating on Dragon Quest Tact. Sazaki received a “unique thank you” mention inside the credit for Balan Wonderworld.
Polygon has contacted rectangular Enix for a remark. In an announcement issued to VGC Thursday, addressing the arrests of Sazaki and Suzuki, the corporation stated:
Naka co-created Sega mascot Sonic the Hedgehog with artist Naoto Ohshima. As lead programmer on the authentic 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog and its sequels, it changed into Naka’s code that enabled the sport’s signature fast-shifting, fluid visuals. Naka left Sega in 2006 and spent a while as an independent developer earlier than joining rectangular Enix in 2018, where he reteamed with Ohshima to develop Balan Wonderworld.
However, the game’s improvement didn’t move well. Balan Wonderworld became launched in March 2021 and met with terrible evaluation scores and
