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Yuji Naka supposedly Arrested

StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
adamsapple said:
www.videogameschronicle.com

Yuji Naka indicted in Square Enix insider trading case | VGC

Yuji Naka and former Square Enix employee Taisuke Sasaki have been formally indicted by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office’s Special Investigation Department following their arrest for alleged insider trading offenses and breach of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.
www.videogameschronicle.com www.videogameschronicle.com
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Woo-boy. Never mind Naka's $20,000 insider trading last time. He pooled his money and went big on SE.

According to NHK, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office has determined that Naka had confidential information that Square had planned to develop a Final Fantasy spin-off, Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier with mobile developer ATeam Entertainment.

Using this information, the Sonic the Hedgehog creator purchased ¥144.7 million yen ($834,000) of company stock, with the knowledge that stock value in the company would rapidly rise following the public announcement of the collaboration. Sasaki also allegedly purchased ¥105 million yen ($787,318) of stock.
 
A.Romero

A.Romero

Member
SlimeGooGoo said:
Square-Enix is a dirty company. They set him up because he exposed how shitty their management was.

Be strong Naka, Gaf is with you!
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Can't both SE sucking at management and Naka being an asshole be true?

I'm not sure how this stuff works in Japan but I'd imagine that if other employees did the same it would be hard to just run over Naka and ignore the rest. If he was the only one (together with the other guy) how would SE set him up? I mean, First Soldier was announced in February 2021 so Naka had to purchase the stocks before that date. Naka worked for SE until April 2021 and Balan was released in March 2021. The lawsuit came to be until April 2022 (or at least according to Wikipedia) and apparently Naka said that the last six months of development of Balan were not under his direction.

So let's assume that in August 2020 shit hit the fan and SE removed Naka as a director. 5 months later he purchases stock in advance of First Soldier... I find it hard to believe that Naka would bite on bait from SE if their relationship was already strained.

Don't know but the dates don't seem to align to the theory that SE set him up. I'm not saying that SE is not a sucky company (TBH I don't know enough to have an opinion) but at leas in this regard it seems Naka made the decision to get rich quick by breaking the law.
 
N

Neilg

Member
The announcement didnt spike their stock, the height was set in august, maintained that with a bit of bouncing around until feb, and pretty much since the announcement it's steadily fallen by $10. There's a good chance he lost money on the trade - if he bought after august. if he bought before august, any money he made had nothing to do with insider knowledge.
insider trading with videogames doesnt seem like it pays off all that much. stock price goes up once it turns into a megahit, first earnings after release.
 
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Hugare

Hugare

Member
SlimeGooGoo said:
I was half joking, but yes it's possible.

Yuji Naka seems to be a great guy but also has a bad temperament. He seems to be a little resentful sometimes.

But it's also convenient that all this happened after he spoke ill of them in public and also sued them
[/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL]

Again, not an impossible scenario, but this also smells fishy.
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There are multiple reports of him being an asshole.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/...dreamcasts-star-fox-says-former-sega-producer

Naka came to visit with his team to tour our studio [and] look at our tools and engine; we had a lot of proprietary [and] really phenomenal tech – I would say still to this day, [we had] some stuff that I haven't seen replicated quite at the level we had. [Naka] didn't realize that the people on my team, a lot of them spoke fluent Japanese, including my lead engineer. [Naka] started speaking in Japanese assuming that no one would understand; [he] started talking about what parts of our tech they were going take for Sonic and then basically said as soon as they ship, fire everyone but one of the engineers who knows their system and roll him onto our team for Sonic – and my team heard all that, so you can imagine how they felt. Naka was pretty powerful at Sega at that time.
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So I had a group of five engineers that now knew what was potentially happening to their baby. They were, outside of [NFL2K and NBA2K studio] Visual Concepts, the only people in North America working on a 128-bit gaming console, [so it was] pretty easy to go get another job – so they did. I had to go to Bernie [and tell him] I just lost my five lead engineers and I've got a proprietary engine; even if I hire, I've got healthy burn rate... we were expensive title for that time... it was a lot of money [and] it was impossible to justify. It would have taken me two months to hire, another two months to ramp up... so [I've got] four months of burn rate where pretty much nothing's happening.
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https://www.eurogamer.net/yuji-naka...photo-following-balan-wonderworld-controversy




And now 2 cases of inside trading

Way too many evidences proving that he is a douchebag

And him saying that Square didnt give him enough time to polish Balan is just ridiculous

If you have seen videos of that game (you dont even have to play it) you'll notice that there are deeper problems with that game that decades of polishing wouldnt solve

He is just blaming someone else for his failure due to his huge ego
 
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A.Romero

A.Romero

Member
Hugare said:
There are multiple reports of him being an asshole.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/...dreamcasts-star-fox-says-former-sega-producer



https://www.eurogamer.net/yuji-naka...photo-following-balan-wonderworld-controversy




And now 2 cases of inside trading

Way too many evidences proving that he is a douchebag

And him saying that Square didnt give him enough time to polish Balan is just ridiculous

If you have seen videos of that game (you dont even have to play it) you'll notice that there are deeper problems with that game that decades of polishing wouldnt solve

He is just blaming someone else for his failure due to his huge ego
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Interesting article. I'm always amazed that people can be that shitty in business but I guess crappy companies are made from crappy employees.
 
Hugare

Hugare

Member
SlimeGooGoo said:
People are complex beasts, and they change over time. Not a single person remains the same after 20/30 years.

He got this fame of being a person hard to work with, but at the same time without context it's hard to judge a person in a fair manner.
Most of the people are judging Naka because of what a couple of people said in interviews.

He was one of the most hard-working people at SEGA. It was a pretty competitive environment, and you usually need a thick skin to survive these environments.

He also respected Yu Suzuki a lot.
[/URL][/URL][/URL]
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"They change over time"

Those 2 fraud accusations arent even 2 years old. Get a grip.

Dude is being arrested AGAIN, for ANOTHER crime

He may respect Jesus Christ for all I care, it doesnt change his actions
 
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StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Hugare said:
There are multiple reports of him being an asshole.

https://www.timeextension.com/news/...dreamcasts-star-fox-says-former-sega-producer



https://www.eurogamer.net/yuji-naka...photo-following-balan-wonderworld-controversy




And now 2 cases of inside trading

Way too many evidences proving that he is a douchebag

And him saying that Square didnt give him enough time to polish Balan is just ridiculous

If you have seen videos of that game (you dont even have to play it) you'll notice that there are deeper problems with that game that decades of polishing wouldnt solve

He is just blaming someone else for his failure due to his huge ego
Click to expand...

Wow. Guy sounds like a jackass. Cant believe he did the 'ol "I bet nobody else knows what I'm talking about" bit. Some high level boss he was.

Tip for all when there is news regarding people's performance or job.

Praise in public. Criticize behind closed doors.

It'll do you wonders in your career.
 
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poodaddy

poodaddy

Member
//DEVIL// said:
I wanna buy it on PC when it hits 1$ just for the sake of owning it.
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That's an egregious price for that foil wrapped turd. Actually, I think a foil wrapped turd would legitimately be more fun, I mean you could light it on fire, throw it at a neighbor's door that you hate, toss it in the back of a douchebag's truck on a hot day, so many options; all of which would be more entertaining than Balan.
 
A.Romero

A.Romero

Member
James Sawyer Ford said:
Insider trading because he saw Square was making Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games???!

Don’t need to be an insider to know that 🤣
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The insider part is what would allow him to know when to buy cheap and when to sell higher based on hype.

So basically: Everyone knowes when a new FF will come out but not everybody knows when, how, what platforms and how shitty it is.

Imagine buying stock when FFXV was announced. Then the stock goes down because years pass and the game is not released. That's a risk a common investor would face.

Now imagine buying stock before FFXV was announced. Then sell at it's high before becoming evident that it will take 10 years for the game to come out because you were in an internal meeting where they trashed the game's director for not meeting milestones or failing to develop something interesting. You know the game won't appear at TGS and investors will lose confidence and pull their money out.

These laws try to even the field so people working inside the company can't leverage privy info to fuck on other investors. Remember the money people make in the market is not created from nowhere. Money investors make can come from other investors left "holding the bag".
 
M

MrA

Member
James Sawyer Ford said:
Insider trading because he saw Square was making Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games???!

Don’t need to be an insider to know that 🤣
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He didn't buy in square, he bought into a smaller company called Aiming
Also should watch squares stock maybe part of the plea agreement will be to name of insider traders at square Enix
This type of stupid scandle could result in a great time to invest if no one important ends up in trouble
 
NeoGiffer

NeoGiffer

Member
SlimeGooGoo said:
Hope he still gets to make games.
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SONA01_06_ENG_ME_24SD_140006_1920x1080.jpeg
 
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O

Ozzie666

Member
If you had told me this is how it was going to back in 1992, I would have thought you were on crack. What a ride and career to get to this point.
That hat still cracks me up.
 
RoboFu

RoboFu

One of the green rats
poodaddy said:
It's so rare to see the rich elite get fucked when they try to rig the system, so this warms my cold heart by a few degrees. Dude was clearly already rich, but it wasn't enough for him. If Souls games have taught me anything, it's not to get greedy.
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He wasn’t rich nor elite. He barely had a net WORTH of 1 million.
 
poodaddy

poodaddy

Member
RoboFu said:
You do know net worth includes your assets like your home and cars.. most people with 2 cars and a decent house have a net worth of half a million.
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Yeah I'm aware, I fit squarely into that demographic.

I still feel absolutely nothing for him.
 
Sleepwalker

Sleepwalker

Member
Not gonna lie, creating a piece of shit like Balan and shorting your own company's stock at the same time sounds like a brilliant evil plan. Not so much in retrospect.
 
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