Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, was detained and charged with insider trading last year, allegedly committed when he was employed at Square Enix.
NHK reports that during his prosecution for breaking the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act in Japan, Naka acknowledged committing that offense.
While employed by Square Enix, Taisuke Sasaki and Naka allegedly bought shares in Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, an Ateam-created mobile spin-off, before it was made public.
Naka was charged with investing around $1.08 million, or 144.7 million in Japanese yen, in the developer’s shares.
Naka was charged with buying shares in both Ateam and Aiming, Inc., the company that created Dragon Quest Tact.
Naka and the other stock buyers were counting on the mobile announcements to generate massive profits once they were made public.
Ironically enough, Square Enix’s The First Soldier was actually more of a flop, and the game was discontinued early this year.
No other information concerning Naka’s admission or the potential sentence has been made public for the time being but it is expected that the public will get to hear more details soon enough.
Although Yuji Naka’s career with Sega is well known, he departed the organization in 2006. 2018 saw Naka start working for Square Enix on the creation of the platformer known as Balan Wonderworld.
Many Sonic fans were optimistic about the project given Naka’s experience with the series, but it turned out to be both a financial and critical failure.
The game’s quality also dissatisfied Naka, who claimed last year that he was fired from Square Enix 6 months before the release of the game for bringing up his concerns about it.
It’s not clear if any of it is accurate or who is to blame for the game’s problems, but it’s obvious that things didn’t turn out the way everyone had intended.