A Konami employee has been arrested in Japan for allegedly trying to kill his former boss. According to the police, the man attacked him after experiencing power harassment at the workplace.
- On June 11, several Japanese outlets reported the news about a 41-year-old Konami employee who was arrested in Tokyo.
- According to Livedoor, the man entered the office building at 11 am and then hit his former boss in the head with a fire extinguisher from behind. One of his colleagues eventually managed to detain the suspect and hand him over to a police officer.
- “I was being harassed [from the position of power], and I hit him with the intention of killing him,” the 41-year-old worker told the police. As a result of an investigation, he was charged with attempted murder.
- According to the Tsukiji Police Station, the victim suffered a head contusion injury, and his treatment will take about seven days.
- As explained by Asahi Shimbun, the two men worked on the same team and had a subordinate-boss relationship. But details about how the boss harassed the worker remain undisclosed.
- Prior to the attack, the suspect tried to report the power harassment to Konami’s HR department. However, the company said there was no evidence of such misconduct.
- Konami tried to resolve the issues between the two men by transferring the 41-year-old employee to another team in August 2020.
In other criminal news about the Japanese games industry, Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka was arrested last year on suspicion of insider trading related to the free-to-play mobile game Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. He finally pleaded guilty last month, but it is unclear what legal punishment he faces.
In September 2022, Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, chairman of FromSoftware’s parent company Kadokawa, was arrested on suspicion of offering bribes to a former member of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics organizing committee. He then announced his intent to resign from the Japanese holding company.