Fight! — Legal game in video games
The video games industry is seeing some real-life action and suspense this month. In early June, Tomonobu Itagaki, head of the Team Ninja development team at Tecmo, and the man behind titles such as Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, recently announced his resignation from the company and has filed complaints against it for unpaid bonuses and against Tecmo president Yoshimi Yasuda. Two of his colleagues at Tecmo later followed suit with similar complaints of unpaid overtime. At face value, the cases may seem altogether unremarkable especially to those not particularly interested in Tecmo games or video games in general, but given Japanese reticence towards litigation versus the recent clamor for work-life balance, the possible ramifications may spread to other industries as Japan struggles with labor practices and workers’ rights.
For those of you who haven’t been keeping score, here’s a brief rundown of key events:
June 3, 2008 Itagaki announces his resignation and discloses complaints against Tecmo concerning unpaid bonuses and against company president Yoshimi Yasuda.
June 4, 2008 Tecmo responds to Itagaki’s complaints, stating that it has regularly paid Itagaki’s bonuses every year, and that the unpaid bonuses Itagaki is referring to are separate and were agreed to by previous management. [Japanese pdf] [Summary at Gamasutra]
June 10, 2008 Tecmo files for a gag-order on Itagaki, which would in essence prohibit him from talking about the company in any way to anybody. [Summary at GameSpot]
June 16, 2008 Hiroaki Ozawa and Tatsuki Tsunoda file a separate lawsuit against Tecmo. According to Game Watch Impress, the contents of the suit allege that Tecmo used a ringer to act as “Employee Representative” — Tecmo Union leader — in order to forge documents to avoid paying workers overtime. [Commentary in English here and evaluation of the documents here at kotaku]
June 18, 2008 Itagaki and Tecmo submit almost identical but conflicting documents regarding “special incentives”. [itmedia via kotaku]
From a more base perspective, this case pretty much has everything — a rock-star plaintiff, a ringer, forged documents, millions of yen at stake and even some violence and undulating bosoms! While I cling to slender hope that the cases may bring about some positive precedents, others in the industry have a somewhat more cynical take, and expects that in the end business will continue as usual.
Should Mr. Itagaki win his suit, it might have interesting repercussions. He could, with a little image make-over, be considered somewhat of an example for other, embattled employees struggling with Japan’s changing corporate atmosphere where employee rights are becoming more important. On the other hand, this being Japan, it is equally likely that, win or lose, everything will stay just as it is. Actually, that is far more likely an outcome. (original emphasis)
I’m not so sure Itagaki would even like to work at Techmo again even if everything’s smoothed over. Wasn’t Ninja Gaiden: Sigma released on the PS3 against his will?
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Personally, I have my fingers crossed he’ll split ways and just create his own studio or something.
There’s a simpler reason it won’t change anything. If it was anyone but Itagaki that started this, it might have caused some kind of change, but Itagaki has proven time and time again with smear politics that he has his own agenda when it comes to everything he does in the public eye. He’s already so alienated from Japan that I don’t think anyone there is going to feel like they want to be represented by him.
I partly agree with you in that Itagaki doesn’t make himself out to be everyone’s best friend, but the fact that another two Tecmo employees seemed to have taken up their lawsuit while it’s big in the news suggests that there is probably something amiss in the land of Tecmo, and they want people to know about it. If it weren’t for Itagaki making a big stink in the first place, I posit that Ozawa and Tsunoda wouldn’t have been able to get as much public attention to their suit.
Another interesting factor is that there actually isn’t a legal equivalent of a class action suit in Japan (there’s something called “representative action”, but it’s still not the same as class action like in the US). Basically, all parties to a litigation, whether plaintiff or defendant, are NOT guaranteed uniform remedies, so it would never actually be the case that Itagaki would represent anyone else but himself.
There are only two other employees filing suit against Tecmo, but Ozawa is the official representative of the labor union and his lawsuit encompasses all of the 300 other employees currently at Tecmo.
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