Tecmo responds to Itagaki lawsuit

Japanese game developer Tecmo has responded to the lawsuit brought upon it by former employee Tomonobu Itagaki, the father of the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series, the existence of which was announced yesterday.

Rather than pick choice quotes from the company’s release, we’ve translated the full statement below.

Our employee Tomonobu Itagaki (hereafter ‘the employee’) released information to the press on March 3rd 2008 regarding his resignation from the company effective July 1st, his lawsuit regarding the payment of a completion bonus, consolation money sought from ourselves and our president, and his reasons for doing so.

Upon explaining the findings of our internal investigation to the sexual harassment claims against the employee, we urged him to abide by our rules and devote himself to his work, but in the course of that the employee has brought forward this one-sided lawsuit.In addition to regular bonuses, we have a completion bonus system that is determined by a fixed procedure. Regarding the employee, we have paid those completion bonuses, including for the DOA4 project, every year. The bonus referred to by the employee was seperate from the aforementioned completion bonus system, and no decision was made regarding this. Not only that, but this is an issue from the previous management era, and a one-sided complaint.Furthermore, regarding the demand for compensation against our company and our president, is a distortion by the employee and based on matters that have not been spoken about.We are taking the employee’s suit as a serious matter, but on the other hand because this lawsuit is due to self-centred reasoning, we have held back in making a public response. However, the employee has not only publicly announced the reality of this lawsuit, but has also within his statement proclaimed that the games developed through the hard work of our development studio Team NINJA to be his work only.The employee’s recent actions have been extremely regrettable, but sooner or later the intentions behind the statement will become clear.These one-sided, untruthful statements borne from personal reason have damaged the social confidence and position of our company as well as our relationships with customers, shareholders, employees and business partners.Our Team NINJA development studio is currently already started work on a new title line. It is our intention to give Team NINJA and the whole company the assistance to make spectacular games.

We sincerely apologise from our hearts for trouble caused to our customers, shareholders and business partners, and hope for your continued support.