The Japanese developer, who most recently created Balan Wonderworld for Square Enix, admitted his guilt on the first day of his trial…

We previously reported that Yuji Naka had made money illegally while working at Square Enix. It was about two mobile games in which the Japanese publisher was involved as a publisher (and their IPs were used). ATeam was working on Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, while Aiming Inc. was developing Dragon Quest Tact. Naka had inside information on the announcement of both, so he acted in time to buy shares in the companies, which he held for about $1 million and $120,000, respectively.

It is punishable by law, as he had information that an outsider would not have, so it is no wonder that he was handcuffed, as he pocketed nearly $146,000 in profits from the illegal trading, which he did not even try to deny in court! According to NHK, Naka said, “There is no doubt that I knew the facts about the game before it was made public and bought the stock.” It is an admission of insider trading and, with a conviction rate of 99.9% in Japanese courts, it should prepare him for months or years behind bars.

We can guess why Naka pleaded guilty: he doesn’t want his sentence to be much harsher (because the authorities have found out about his dealings, and he can’t deny that!), but there is no turning back from here, and it will end his development career, which went down a bad ditch with Balan Wonderworld. He was the project director for that game before Square Enix removed him (and the result was a dismal failure), and he criticized the Japanese publisher at every level.

The company is about to go through a CEO change (if approved at the annual shareholders’ meeting, Takashi Kiryu will succeed the NFT-crazy Yosuke Masuda…). Naka says it doesn’t care about the games and the fans. We’d agree with that, given Denuvo’s inclusion in most Square Enix titles without many cases of removing them.

Source: PCGamer