We are still reeling from how untamed the last 24 hours have been here in the United States, so let’s get right to the most unexpected, unbridled news item that dropped right at the tail end of this week—
Square Enix has recently busted a case of insider trading committed by current employees, which included the involvement of Balan Wonderworld developer and former Sonic series producer, Yuji Naka. Initial reports have noted that current employees, Fumiaki Suzuki and Taisuke Sasaki, were apprehended by the Tokyo Police with the suspicions of investing stock in a third party developer ahead of the public announcement of a new Dragon Quest mobile game. Not that long after that information was made, Fuji News Network reported that Yuji Naka was also arrested for his participation in the scandal. Naka has been a hot button subject here at Video Game Choo Choo, and it remains pending if this fall from grace will be a stunning, potential conclusion to that arc. That said, insider trading is considered illegal in Japan, so we can only infer what sort of disciplinary measures the suspects will have to face if their crimes are proven.
Honestly, it is a bit difficult to go further up from there—especially as investigation is ongoing—but other legal battles are also being pursued and conquered…
Blizzard Entertainment will officially not be renewing their partnership with NetEase, a major games company that has licensed several of Blizzard’s titles in China. The two companies have been unable to come to an agreement, and as a result, sales and access to servers for World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch 2, Starcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III, and Warcraft III: Reforged will be completely suspended in China in the upcoming year. There is currently no publicly released statements if or when these titles will ever be accessible again to the region.
As a result of a long, two-year legal battle, Cooking Mama: Cookstar is to be delisted from sale. The game’s publisher, Planet Entertainment, is no longer authorized to sell or distribute the title and other misleading, Cooking Mama-related works. The initial release of the game back in 2020 was met with bizarre treatment and was even hastily pulled from storefronts then, in which Cooking Mama’s IP holder, Office Create was starting to allege that Planet failed several contractual obligations. Initial theories and rumors that were circulating around that time falsely thought that the game was pulled due to having software that was mining cryptocurrency.
After the Saints Row reboot unfortunately did not meet the expectations it wanted to hit, Volition is being absorbed into Gearbox.
Risk of Rain has also been acquired by Gearbox. Although they have explicitly expressed this means they will no longer work on the series, unlike the aforementioned situation with Volition, the games’ original developers, Hopoo Games, remains independent.
Riot Games and Ubisoft are teaming up to collect in-game chat logs in their respective games’ communities as data to train AI technology for an “anti-toxicity research project”. Both companies have had their own fair share of allegations of toxicity and abuse teeming within their respective workplaces.
In a rather bizarre collaboration, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege will be featuring a NieR Replicant bundle among other possible NieR related in-game goods for the game’s upcoming season.
In a rather unprecedented move with prior United States presidential offices, the Biden administration is remaining intent on blocking computer chip exports to China to encourage more domestic production. The move comes accompanied with growing concerns over foreign security and tensions with the Chinese government, but also the administration’s own agenda on wanting to overall encourage more domestic chip production.
While Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet are officially released—Dead Island 2 is delayed, again. The game’s previous delay date was set for February 2023, and has been pushed back into April. You can also reference a chronicle of this game’s saga of delay announcements on our end, too!
