CHIBA, JAPAN – 2022/09/17: Sonic the Hedgehog balloon at the Sega exhibition area at Tokyo Game Show 2022. After a two years break forced by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Tokyo Game Show returned to Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. (Photo by Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
according toFuji newspaperreport,“Sonic”Yuji Naka, the co-creator of (Sonic) and the head of the original game programming, was arrested on suspicion of insider trading. It is said that when he worked for Square Enix before, he spent 2.8 million yen and used inside information to buy about 10,000 shares of the latter before SE announced that it would cooperate with Aiming to develop “Dragon Quest Strategy Commander”. Before arresting Yuji Naka, the Japanese police arrested two other former SE employees for the same reason, and the two invested a total of 47.2 million yen to buy Aiming’s stock.
Yuji Naka joined Square Enix in 2018 and is responsible for the development of the action game “Balan Wonderworld”. He left the company shortly after the work was published. And according to Yuji Naka earlier this year, SE actually fired him as director six months before the game launched, for which he also filed a lawsuit against SE. However, the period when Naka Yuji was working coincided with the development period of “Dragon Quest Strategy Commander”, so he also learned about the existence of the game.
In a statement on the matter, Square Enix said it would fully cooperate with the investigation, while promising to establish a plan to prevent potential insider trading.