Yuji Naka Sued Square Enix as They Released Balan Wonderworld in an Unfinished State - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 28 April 2022 / 2,082 Views
Yuji Naka via Twitter revealed he was removed as the Balan Wonderworld director about half a year before it was released and says the game was released in an unfinished state.
He has filed a lawsuit against Square Enix, the publisher of Balan Wonderworld, and now that the proceedings over the lawsuit are over he has given details into the situation over at Square Enix and his experience.
"I was removed as the director of Balan Wonderworld about half a year before release, so I filed a lawsuit against Square Enix," said Naka via a translation from Gematsu. "Now that the proceedings are over and I’m no longer bound by company rules, I’d like to speak out.
"I think it’s wrong of Square Enix not to value games and game fans. According to court documents, I was removed as the director of Balan Wonderworld for two reasons. It was done by the producer, head of marketing, head of sound, managing director, and human resources.
"First, when a YouTuber’s arranged piano performance of the game music was released in a promotion instead of the original game track, turning the composer into a ghostwriter, I insisted that the original track be released and this caused trouble.
"Second, according to court documents, [Naoto] Ohshima told producer [Noriyoshi] Fujimoto that the relationship with [developer] Arzest was ruined due to comments I made wanting to improve the game in the face of Arzest submitting the game without fixing bugs.
"Also, in an e-mail from Ohshima to Fujimoto, he wrote: ‘I just told the staff about the demo delay. When I told them, ‘This was prod. Fujimoto’s decision. Let’s do our best for him,’ the staff applauded and cheered. This was unexpected, and I was moved… The staff’s been down lately, but their spirits have been revived. Thank you very much. All of us on the staff will work hard.’ So the schedule wasn’t up to me, but the producer, yet the schedule being tight was the producer’s doing. Something was off.
"We were releasing an original game, but only putting out an arranged track was definitely wrong. I believe that the game music that everyone can hum out are the original tracks.
"I believe that every effort must be put in to make games the best they can be until the very end so that game fans will enjoy what they buy. It wasn’t right to, without discussion, remove and completely disassociate from the project a director saying so.
"Retweeting, liking, etc. on social media and such was banned, so I don’t think Square Enix values game fans. There were many comments and wonderful illustrations about Balan Wonderworld, and I’m really sorry that I couldn’t react to them.
"Myself, I’m truly sorry to the customers who bought Balan Wonderworld in an unfinished state. From this point onward, I will be able to react to posts tagging me or directed only toward me on social media and such.
"I believe that when making games, asking for fixes in order to make something good should be a given, and if that’s not possible, it should be talked over, but it looks like they can’t. I don’t think they value games.
"For Sonic the Hedgehog, two weeks before finalizing, the specifications were changed so that if you have even one ring, you won’t die. This now well-known rule was the result of improving the game until the very end, and people world-over have enjoyed it as a result.
"Improving a game until the very end is what being a game creator is all about, and if that’s not possible, something’s wrong. I asked my lawyer to negotiate my just being able to comment until the end of production, but their refusal led me to file suit.
"I think that the resulting Balan Wonderworld and the critical reception it received have a lot to do with what happened. I’m really disappointed that a product I worked on from the start turned out this way."
バランワンダーワールド発売の約半年前にバランワンダーワールドのディレクターから外される業務命令が出されましたので、スクウェアエニックスに対して裁判所で訴訟を提起していました。裁判が終わり業務命令が現時点で効力は失われていると言う事ですので、お話したいと思います。#BalanWonderworld pic.twitter.com/9KE7hLqfor
— Yuji Naka / 中 裕司 (@nakayuji) April 28, 2022
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This is damning towards Square! I've been very critical towards Square for some time now, but this is just insane. There has to be more to this than what Naka is letting on. Square created this subsidiary studio for Naka and to toss him out over something so small? I doubt this is the entire story but this is definitely some spicy news!
I do think Square Enix cares very little about their fans, but I also don’t think it’s entirely on them for the game being such a shitty mess of concepts and game design.
Makes sense. Seems like they just wanted to be done with this project, and just released what they had to recover whatever costs they could. To Square's credit, they did at least put out a demo so everyone could see how terrible it was before buying. Unless you were unfortunate enough to get this as a gift, you really only had yourself to blame if you bought it. It's a shame that Naka didn't get to finish it, because I would love more good 3D platformers out there, and maybe it would have been decent.
Can't really disagree with his points
Wow. Poor Yuji Naka, man. Dude got clowned, his game got heavily clowned. Really thinking of what the game should have been like now.
Considering that Square just sold those $12,000 Terra statues a couple days ago...I would have to agree that Square Enix doesn't like their fans.
Shame on them.
But Arzest also sticks out here to me. Imagine being dependant on getting contracts from bigger companies and then disrespecting them by submitting the product to them in a buggy state.
I mean SE has been shitty with a lot of games last few years but let's be honest. Balan was never going to be good and Naka is a notorious asshole. Plus he has not released a good game since he worked with SEGA.
I'm not sure if another year in development would have made the game fun.
A year can make a huge difference in game development. Hell even 6 months can go a long way. That being said Arzest doesn't have the greatest track record.
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