With Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) acquiring 96% of the company’s shares, it is no wonder that SNK has to make a statement.

One of SNK’s veteran developers, Yasuyuki Oda, told VGC whether there is anything to worry about with the emergence of a new owner. Oda has been a producer and designer for some of SNK’s most extensive series (King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Metal Slug… those are the most recognizable names when you think of the company), so he’s a prominent figure.

For example, it could be a legitimate question whether King of Fighters will follow the example of Guilty Gear Strive by adding an LGBT character. “For us, we’re just focussing on making games. We’re not a political company or anything like that, so it doesn’t affect us in any way. It has no – no – effect on our creative output. We have full freedom in what we want to create. Yeah, I would say honestly, the results speak for themselves. If it were an actual problem, then characters like Shermie probably wouldn’t be in the game. We would say that our owners are generally fans of the IP, and they have been forever, so it’s up to us what we want to do as far as creating content goes,” Oda said. Shermie is a female character in the King of Fighters series and sometimes sends kisses to her rivals before fights, regardless of gender.

PIF is backed by the Saudi crown prince (but de facto king), Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, so SNK is state-owned. But this is not the only involvement of PIF in the games industry (it is also one of the country’s moves to reduce its dependence on oil): it has a 5.01% stake in Nintendo (and the Japanese publisher first heard about this from the news), but it also has 5% in Capcom and Nexon, not to mention billions of dollars invested in Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Embracer Group and Take-Two…

We’ll see if there will be changes due to the higher-ups.

Source: VGC