Balan Wonderworld Director Sued Square Enix Amid Claims The Game Was "Unfinished"
Balan Wonderworld turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Previews of the game revealed multiple problems, such as awful platforming, a final boss that could cause seizures, and a song that seemed plagiarized from the original Ghostbusters film. Then the game was released to poor reviews and even worse sales.
A month later, Balan Wonderworld director and Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka revealed that he had been sacked from Square Enix, but he couldn't explain why. Now almost a year after leaving the Balan Wonderworld publisher, Naka has accused Square Enix of not caring "about games and game fans" in a tweetstorm that revealed he even went to court to stop Balan Wonderworld from releasing in an "unfinished" state.
Related: Yuji Naka and Balan Wonderworld Deserved Better
"Approximately half a year before the launch of Balan Wonderworld, a business order was issued to be removed from the director of Balan Wonderworld," wrote Naka (with translation by Google), "so I filed a lawsuit against Square Enix in court."
The trial is now over, so Naka can now discuss what went so terribly wrong with Balan Wonderworld. Naka said documents from his trial revealed two principal complaints, one regarding the release of Balan Wonderworld’s soundtrack, and the other regarding the “collapsed” relationship with support studio Azrest.
Although the translation isn’t perfect, it seems that Naka insisted on releasing Balan Wonderworld’s soundtrack even amidst copyright concerns over streamers playing the game on YouTube. But these issues likely could have been worked out. What truly doomed Balan Wonderworld was the loss of Azrest, a studio that had been helping develop Balan Wonderworld. Naka said there were complaints against Azrest for "submitting"
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