Yuji Naka says he sued Square Enix: ‘It’s a disgrace Balan was released in this state’
Yuji Naka has claimed that he was removed as the director of Balan Wonderworld six months before the heavily criticised game’s release, resulting in him suing publisher Square Enix.
In an explosive series of tweets published on Thursday (and translated in full below by VGC contributor Robert Sephazon), the Sonic the Hedgehog creator was heavily critical of Square Enix and co-developer Arzest for releasing the game in what he believed was an unfinished state.
He said he is now able to address his departure from Square Enix and the game’s reception because the trial has concluded.
“According to official documents”, Naka said the decision to remove him from the project was based on two disputes.
His relationship with Arzest is said to have broken down because it submitted the final build of the game without fixing a number of bugs. The other point of contention was when a YouTuber was going to play the piano and publish the score of an in-game song for promotional purposes, rather than using the original score.
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“Game creators are supposed to improve their games until the very end, and I believe that it is wrong to prevent them from carrying out this goal,” Naka wrote, translated by VGC.
“I asked my lawyer to negotiate with our business partners to at least allow me to address issues on Balan Wonderworld’s development until the very end, but they ignored my requests, so I ultimately decided to file a lawsuit in court.
“It is because of this that Balan Wonderworld received all the criticisms and comments you all know well,” he claimed. “It is quite unfortunate that a project I had spearheaded from the beginning would turn out this way.
“Per
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