Square Enix decided to play it safe and cancelled game tournaments after receiving death threats.

In an official statement, Square Enix says they have reported the threats, and they are fully cooperating with police. To avoid potential problems, the tournaments of Starwing Paradox, which would have been held in four cities across Japan (Tokyo, Yokohama, Fukuoka, and Nagora) have all been cancelled. The company has apologised to those looking forward to the events.

This is the third example this year that Square Enix has received death threats. The first case was in March when a man was threatening to kill Square Enix staff after spending almost 1800 dollars in yen in gacha game (a video game equivalent of a capsule toy). Then, earlier in August, a man was threatening the company with an arson attack, essentially as a repeat of the Kyoto Animation tragedy (this man got arrested in Tokyo). (Also, last September, nearly 30 emails were sent to Square Enix with the word kill in Japanese. The authorities are currently investigating if there are connections between the emails and the recent death threats or not.)

Perhaps Square Enix should think of why these events happened. Perhaps there are a few not-so-good games (or overuse monetization) by them. Perhaps their approach is not the best (we only know of one game on PC where they removed Denuvo, and even that was Life is Strange: Before the Storm…). Sure, there might be psychological reasons behind the threats, but not everyone is perfect and immaculate. Nobody is. We are all imperfect.

We wonder when a similar event will happen in the West (then again, the United States has issues with mass killing with guns – there was a case during a tournament, too).

Source: GameSpot