Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, has been arrested in Japan as part of the ongoing investigation into the Dragon Quest series.
Naka is part of a larger group of people who have been arrested following alleged insider trading around a new game in the series. The controversy comes from the developer Aiming getting the rights to develop an upcoming Dragon Quest game from Square Enix. Allegedly, several people involved with Square bought stakes in Aiming before the deal was made public, which is deemed as insider trading.
The 57 year-old is believed to have purchased stakes in the company Aiming, presumably with the intent of buying low, selling high. Naka is believed to have purchased 10,000 shares in Aiming (worth roughly $20,000) seemingly then to offload for financial gain. Others involved in the investigation including Taisuke Sazaki who bought close to $190,000 worth of shares.
Naka was arrested by Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office on Friday, with the case still being investigated. Given Naka’s many years in video game development, the news is particularly shocking. The video game this is all over, a mobile game called Dragon Quest Tact, is a gacha tactical role-playing game.
There’s some poetry to a gacha game, made almost entirely as a way to sell gambling in a sheep’s clothing, resulting in the corporate version of gambling in the stock exchange and shares.