Dangen Entertainment CEO Steps Down After Harassment Allegations Surface

Oh no!!!!! This is bad news!!!!! I really hope they can resolve this issue, because Devil Engine is one hell of a shooter. Was also really hoping for a physical copy.

Oh no, my whole world is shattered now that this guy I’ve never heard of quit his job at some company I’ve never heard of, and that it somehow affects the developer of a game I’ve never heard of. I don’t think I can sleep now.

The name Ben Judd sounds familiar...wasn't he the one who said the infamous "it's better than nothing" regarding Mighty No. 9 while translating for Inafune?

Did anything ever come of the Nintendo of Russia CEO investigation? I remember he was under fire for similar claims--and video evidence.

I’ve been hoping Devil Engine would see a physical release, hopefully this mess gets resolved in positive manner.

Innocent till proven guilty no longer exists.

real shame about devil engine, but man the rest of this is a relief to hear

@BAN IKR, my thoughts exactly. Who are these people, and why in the world is it newsworthy?

No-name studio and a bunch of no-names.

@Lordplops In this case, he's basically admitted to doing wrong.

@Blizzia i mean, ben judd was the original voice of phoenix wright, and as previously mentioned "the guy who said anime fan on prom night"

Well at least he's owning up to it.

I'll admit to just reading the headline on this and no more so yes, my mistake. My point still stands in general though - seems to be a common trend where peoples lived are ruined by unsubstantiated allegations - again, clearly not on this occasion so sorry about that.

@Lordplops

Seems to be a more common trend of folks hearing about sexual assault allegations and immediately siding with the sexual predators and blaming the victims. For every person who supports a full investigation into every allegation, there are at least five apologists.

> I'll admit to just reading the headline on this and no more

Why do you default to blaming the victim and siding with a potential sexual predator?

@FNL I'm not getting into a debate about this, I've given my opinion. And apologised. Have a good one.

@Lordplops

I wasn't looking for a debate, I was just asking a simple question. Have a good one, pal. Hopefully you're able to learn from this.

@FNL I ain't your pal, buddy 😂😂 sorry, couldn't resist.

I'm confused as to what is happening with Devil engine.

@Lordplops Equally do claims get ignored, especially when the offenders are much more powerful than this guy. It basically becomes impossible, even when they claw some attention they get called crazy or a liar because mainstream media wouldn't dare touch people with a certain amount of wealth, because the police won't, either.

@somebread The original voice of Phoenix Wright was literally "OBJECTION". A few other utterances too. I've played every Phoenix Wright game through 4+ times and I had absolutely no idea.

The dude is a no-name.

You've heard of #YouTubeisOverParty, now get ready for #ProtocultureisOverParty!

@Blizzia ...and are those utterances not the first thing anyone thinks of when you mention phoenix wright?
regardless, pretty much all of his fame is capcom-related; he's also who revived bionic commando for a short time

@somebread No, never. The first thing I think about when Phoenix Wright is mentioned is the genius writing, not some random one-liner anybody could've shouted into a halfbaked off-brand microphone in their basement.

@Blizzia guess who also did the localization writing for phoenix wright?

@somebread Wouldn't know.

@Blizzia same dude as his voice, man :V

@somebread Because clearly that single dude wrote all the dialogue alone, right?

EDIT: I was also referring to the original writing btw.

Try as might I just cant bring myself to care. Wish this site, and many more, would stick to reporting gaming news and leave this to Twitter etc. Its starting to feel like a cheap tabloid here at times.

@bluemage1989 "Head of gaming company Dangen has stepped down (and also a game for the Nintendo Switch, a game console, is out of a game developer's hands)" is not gaming news?

@EarthboundBenjy yeah lol https://www.pcgamer.com/mighty-no-9-creator-says-its-better-than-nothing/
This is a golden parachute: "although he will stay on as a freelancer and be honoured financially."

Another day, another man ousted for being a jobbie. Business as usual.

Probably just a bunch of crazy left wing liberal feminists making stuff up to try and get him in trouble as is so often the case these days.

@mist The guy literally confessed. It’s in the article, if you’d read it.

Not sure how this is game news but okay.

@somebread no it is not it is click bait aimed at luring in people with salacious details. The fact that an arse worked for a gaming company does not make it it gaming news in the same way that 'teen gunman owns CoD' does not make a shooting gaming news. This is just blindly jumping on the bandwagon that sites like Kotaku have created with the aim of attracting the angry liberals.

Please read the darn article before responding to it. Because some people are having trouble with that, though:

The former CEO clearly admits to causing harm and is stepping down. There are no mentions of any charges being filed. Another employee is being let-go as full-time staff but will remain on the company payroll as a freelancer. Dangan has also been having issues with falling through on its commitments with game dev companies, to the point where one of those studios can’t access their own game right now.

That being said, please read the article. Thank you.

@Belatarr I’m pretty sure that Patron is a troll. If the way that they sound like no actual liberal feminist that I’ve ever met didn’t give it away for me (and as a liberal feminist myself I’ve met a few in my life) then the way that they spell ‘women’ differently every time they use the word does. I don’t think anyone even uses any of those other spellings outside of Hollywood Wicca these days, lol.

There’s also the fact that, as you said, their posts never actually make sense.

glad to see the "innocent until proven guilty by anyone but themselves, their family, a load of companies and gaming industry people, etc." crowd have arrived, where would we be without you guys
@bluemage1989 i feel like "CEO" is a bit more important than "worked at," in addition to the fact that, again, a company being unable to access a game (i.e.: support is impossible for it) is kind of pertinent information

itt chuds mad

@Belatarr It means that I consider myself a feminist as well as someone who falls on the liberal side of the political spectrum (mind you, liberal in the US (where I am, and I know most people on this site are not) is very different than a liberal in the UK (https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32qbkt/eli5_the_difference_between_american_liberal_and/). I agree with a lot of what other American liberals believe in regards to racial/gender/etc equality, preserving the environment, economic reform, educational reform, taxation, etc. It's easier for me to sum my views up in that way when referencing someone who seems to be trying to parody that sort of person than it is for me to go down the list of every single issue and how I feel about them, especially since my views do hew stereotypically to the far left side of the American political political spectrum (what can I say, I'm boring).

Going, again, from how people define the terms in the US: yes, you can be a conservative feminist. My extended family is pretty evenly split between liberals and conservatives, but there are those who consider themselves feminists on both sides.

Nobody's obliged to do anything, though, or think and act in any way but how they believe they should think and act. There's plenty of variety in feminist circles as well as political ones. For example, the feminists in my family who identify as conservative are often extremely pro-life, while those who identify as liberal are often extremely pro-choice. That's just one issue out of a huge number of them, but it's a quintessentially feminist issue so it's a good one to use.

@YANDMAN

Mainly, the developer has been claiming that they haven’t received any of their royalties from sales of the game.

@robr HOLY SH#T! That is absolutely terrible. That is such a fantastic game and they worked so hard on it. I really hope that get's resolved.

@YANDMAN

TBH, I took a moment to read up on the entire ish-show and the only thing we know for a fact is that there was a never ending barage of abusive messages from the developer to the publisher and that this Alex person is on an unhinged vendetta to harrass their ex-boyfriend with public abuse via Twitter.

@robr wait , so the team who made Devil Engine are the one's causing the problems???

@YANDMAN

Nobody with integrity could say they know. Some anonymous person wrote up some long (it had an index at the beginning) article that got published on Medium (before Medium deleted it for...um...investigating facts). A lot of accusations were made. Lot’s of petty nonsense was thrown in. Private texts/emails and public posts were put on display. A lot of anonymous sources allegeding bad behaviour without saying what the behaviour was. There was an akward private email love letter of sorts from the Judd guy that was publicized. Depending on the context, it could have been wholly inappropriate or just wholly embarrassing. Simultaneously, the fact that he dated a 24 year old adult at 36 is what’s being used to sell the idea that he is a sexual predator (which does not make any sense). The sexual harrasmant / grooming allegations mostly come from an ex-girlfriend’s (although they are an ex-they now) twitter account. Her/their posts are super abusive and hostile yet vague. Moving to $$. In either that article or forum posts responding to it (memory foggy), a whole bunch of screencapped private messages and public messages were used to claim that Dangen was witholding payments. Reality is, those private messages or dm’s or whatever they were just show accusations being made coupled with nonstop insults. Dangen claims all payments were made. Who knows? Something about an escrow bank account and issues with tax paperwork. I understand that when people are abused, toyed with, or screwed out of money, they can end up snapping and looking like they’re “crazy” while the other party acts calm, cool and collected. I’ve been there, and of course just about every woman that has been sexually assaulted has been there. That said, people decided to bring receipts, but the receipts only seem to prove their own bad behaviour.

@robr Thank you for taking the time to write that excellent response, that's really appreciated. The whole age gap thing is absolutely ridiculous, she's a 24 year old WOMAN.

@YANDMAN

Yes, but, I’ve personally piled on ridiculous additional complaints about people I’ve been in abusive relationships with in the past. Distraught people behave distraughtingly. They can say the guy is a space alien and that statement wouldn’t neccessarily negate that something occurred. However, stuff like that obviously calls credibility into question. So, now that this topic is spreading over news sites, journalistic integrity comes into question.

@FNL
You yourself have labeled who is the predator and who is the victim.
Innocent until proven guilty.

@Fandabidozi again, the man literally said "I've caused a great deal of pain to not only Alex, but my friends, co-workers, and business relations and I am deeply sorry for that."

Predatory claims aside it sounds like this guy was mismanaging the company.

@somebread he was not the guy who said 'anime fan on prom night'

@Ghost-Piece that could be a lie told to save what face he can. it's gotten to the point where once the accusations are made, regardless of whether their true or not, are automatically regarded as being true by bandwagoners and cost people jobs or in the case of alec holowka his life

@YANDMAN i can see why you see the age gap is seen as ridiculous but theres always more to it then that. especially as she was already a legal adult.
i've already seen a 7 year relation ship between a woman in her late 40s & a guy in his late 30s go to hell. but the thing is, what really killed the relationship was the guy being a weed addict and money issues. mostly the money issues, after the break up he went back into the bad habits & unhealthy lifestyle he had prior and the last i saw of him he was being beaten up by some around 10 year old girls in park before the off duty cop i called over shooed away the girls & dragged him off to the hospital.
on the other hand i know a 65 year old woman who got married to a 20 year old when she was 33 & they where together til he died at 50, smiling because he died in the arms of the one he truly loved.
you can't write off a relationship between TWO ADULTS just because of an age gap. you can however write it off when it's obviously not going to go anywhere good. while age & difference between experience and generation do play a part, its not the deciding factor.

@FNL Sometimes the person who is accused of something is the actual victim. (Not talking about this person on this article.)

@gojiguy yeah, that was my bad, he was the guy who said "better than nothing"; its easy to mix the two up

So many people willing to jump to the defense of yet another narcissist. What is with their hold on the weak willed?

@somebread
People say a lot of things.