Konami’s supposed YAKUZA ties: TRUTH or NONSENSE?
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- Опубликовано: 23 май 2024
- Konami is undeniably a legend of the Japanese gaming industry. With beloved franchises like Castlevania, Metal Gear and Silent Hill in their catalog, it’s hard not to be a fan. However, rumors have circulated that Konami might be involved with the Yakuza, Japan’s crime groups. Are these accusations a mere theory made up by people who dislike the company’s new direction which steered them away from console gaming, or is there more to these rumors?
#konami #yakuza #gaming
Constructive criticism is not only allowed, but welcome! ☺️
Abroad in Japan’s Pachinko video: • Japan's Biggest Gaming...
Sources:
mariowiki.net/wiki/Konami
www.konami.com/corporate/en/h...
www.konami.com/corporate/en/b...
spectrum.ieee.org/the-secret-...
pachinko-shiryoshitsu.jp/en/st...
www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...
web.archive.org/web/201709201...
www.tokyoreporter.com/crime/p...
www.tokyoreporter.com/crime/y...
www.eurogamer.net/konami-just...
gamecola.net/2017/01/konami-i...
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=...
• Japan's Biggest Gaming...
www.resetera.com/threads/til-...
kimi.wiki/jobsearch/black-com...
kotaku.com/report-konami-is-t...
kotaku.com/after-a-bad-experi...
www.svg.com/155464/the-truth-...
www.japansubculture.com/most-e...
www.siliconera.com/konami-emp...
arstechnica.com/information-t...
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:45 - Konami
06:27 - Pachinko
12:55 - Black Kigyou 
Игры
Which Konami franchise is your favorite? 💬⬇️
Metal gear solid and castlevania cause military and vampires
Even though they both only had 1 game, I love violent storm and mystic warriors
Yugioh
Contra, bar none.
@@michaeljacksonfanmade87 Interesting choice, never played those before!
While far from a proof, I think that being a "black Company" speaks against strong ties with the Yakuza.
OC usually tries to keep their front businesses with a nice facade and good reputation, simply to avoid unwanted attention.
You think Konami was awful for the past 10 years or so? Think again - they've been like this long time ago, even back in their golden era of 1980s and 1990s, when the company was churning out copious amount of high-quality games for various systems, only rivaled by Capcom at the time. Even then, there were some people within Konami who were sick of company's practices and splintered from the Kobe-based giant. These were Natsume, founded in 1988 - they made a handful of great late NES games, such as Shatterhand or Special Cybernetic Attack Team - the latter's music and sound effects are very similar to those from Contra, thanks to Kyohei Sada, and Treasure, founded in 1992 - these guys excelled in 16 bits, and in a turn of irony, they were tasked by their former employers with developing the final entry in the Gradius franchise. So it comes as no surprise that Kojima didn't really want to continue the Metal Gear series after MGS2 and eventually he parted his ways with Konami back in 2015, as other game developers were reportedly demoted to... janitors and other menial jobs. From that point on, Konami pretty much outsourced any video game development to third party companies.
Don't forget about the shell publishers they built and burned (like Ultra games) to bypass things like Nintendo's restrictions on how many games they could release. The high profile games were released as Konami. I can't imagine that these subsidiaries were treated well.
I really am intrigued by the level of misery, which Konami went to great lengths to achieve and against the people who make the money?
Treasure were also former Konami employees, I just never heard of them having a falling out. Treasure did develop Gradius V for them
@@gc3k those guys made a lot of great content, themselves. Sucks for old time fans like myself to see all of this talent leave, because of odd ball decisions by bean counters.
No they didnt outsource to third parties. Momotaro dentetsu, yugioh, PES and power pro are all done internally.
Wow it kind of makes it strange now that the Game Freak headquarters and Team Rocket's Game Corner are both in Celadon City together in the games.
Damn, you're right! I never thought about that
It seems the Yakuza had their hands in anything that made money, so it is unlikely there are no connections with Konami, the question would be as to the circumstances (eg, whether they were unaware, or willing participants, or perhaps forced), and as to the level of involvement.
Agreed!
I think the big question is based on the inception of these gaming companies. nintendo took advantage of the hanafuda market due to the prohibition of playing cards at the time. Other card game companies shied away from hanafuda cause it was heavily run by the yakuza. It sounds like nintendo shook hands more so then being force. then you fast forward to the 60's and see the love hotels that nintendo opened up that house yakuza dealings. They claimed they were forced to deal with the yakuza but this situation was nearly 70 years after they had profited massively as result of their dealings with the yakuza. Then with the videogame boom any conversation of dealings between and nintendo and the yakuza are almost non existent. Fast forward today? what is nintendo most well known for in this day and age? suing people for anything they deem unfit.
It seems that konami higher up executives are actually more of a cartoon villain for a Yakuza game than anything, seeing how their white collar policies are perfectly legal, but morally corrupt
Konami is still doing predatory business practices. In 2016 the dancegame creator andamiro made a Japanese version of their game "pump it up" to expand the audience, and shortly after selling a couple dozen to arcades in Japan, Konami came into the arcades telling them they do not like the game in their arcades and we're going to restrict the arcades from containing any Konami games or eamuse network status, shortly after almost all the machines were sold and exported to the USA.
My favorite has to be metal gear rising (wow look a Kojima game!) also I can’t wait to flex on all my friends with all of my new found yakuza knowledge. Thank you for this awesome video, keep up the good work!
Man i hope they put MGS Rising on modern systems, i've been waiting to replay that one for a while!
Thanks for watching btw 😁 as always
@@anikihistory Dude that will be so awesome to see Raiden slashing the metal gear in HD
@@Lazyp00lturtle Kojima said that he wanted to make a game starring Raiden, but his staff had no idea how to do it. So Kojima asked Platinum to make it because he was desperate.
Konami being run by the yakuza might be an improvement i bet we would get some fun experimental games.😂
Yeah but they fucked over Kojima.
Ojalá que pudieras realizar otros videos como este pero con otros desarrolladores de videojuegos como SNK, CAPCOM y Arc System Works. Gracias por generar contenido que invita a la reflexión.
Buscaré otras compañías en el futuro, seguro!
¡Gracias por ver! 🙏🏻
Wow this shit is so interesting to me. Maybe one day you can do something on the yakuzas ties to pro wrestling in Japan if any. I herd there was some.
I'll have a video about MMA and the Yakuza up soon! I'll look into pro wrestling and Sumo in the future too, lots of interesting stuff in there
@@anikihistory sweet, I'll be looking forward to it
Amazing work as always🙌
Aniki one of my favorite YT channels 🎉
oh yeah I've heard all the horror stories... so I'm more surprised that they *didn't* have yakuza ties. (I *had* heard that culture brain actually did, but that's probably a whole other story entirely.)
Heh, did you do a slick title change? I thought I saw it as something else just before I boarded a flight and came back to this one
Yeah i totally forgot to put some words in caps! I usually do that because i think it draws attention, idk if it's true tho hahaha
@anikihistory lol I do not know, and likely I would not have noticed the change if I had not seen that you had posted right before I boarded the flight. It really helped to have something to look forward to after a day of travel
Another great video, thank you...
The Underworld will always be involved in big business, whether that's the YaKuZa being involved in Gaming(legal and illegal) in Japan, or La Cosa Nostra being involved in the Fashion Industry in New York, or British Gangsters involved in things like Horse Racing, Boxing in the UK etc
Thanks for checking out my videos, appreciate it a lot 🙏🏻
For sure! I will never stop being fascinated with how much criminals actually influence our society, crazy stuff
Britain still has native gangsters?
@@napoleonfeanor why not? If you know of the families that run London, or Liverpool or Manchester... not sure if you could check their "native" credentials before 1066 haha
@@shanedjoy8954 because most organized crime in England's big cities are foreign now. Britain used to have its own criminal subculture but look at London demographics, just a bit more than a third is ethnic British peoples. Outside England, there still are native gangsters dominating.
@@shanedjoy8954 The fact that Nintendo and Namco has no ties to the Yakuza, explains why they are pretty nice for the most part.
A video on Isokichi Yoshida would be very interesting
Added to the list ✍🏻
I’ve never played the Castlevania games but the Netflix animated show is pretty amazing. I highly recommend it.
The show is so good! If you wanna get into the games, i recommend Symphony of the Night, it's nearly a perfect game 😁
@@anikihistory I’ve seen some clips of its gameplay on RUclips, looks pretty fun.
At 10:23, there may be a connection, however petty, to sumo. It seems when an illegal gambling spot was raided by Tokyo police back then, they caught 2 sumo rikishi (a 2nd division man and his 3rd division tsukebito) playing pachinko there. Hidenoumi and Shiden. No charges were brought against them, but they were suspended one tournament (which cost Shiden a promotion he'd earned to salary-level).
If you get a patreon I will literally donate for the first time in my life
For real? I thought about doing that once i reach 10k subs, until then i'll think about how to make it worth your money 🙏🏻
@@anikihistory you should, you make great content man you deserve all the support
Another great video!
Thank you! 🙏🏻
What an awful company, my lord.
i was thinking about this after watching the sega video
I love the video, it's interesting. Maybe they're not Yakuza criminals, but they are abusive criminals.
Company abuse, fraud, and etc needs to be called what they are: crimes. They are criminals just on virtue of engaging in abuse against their own employees. Imo anyways. I feel like business abuse and the like gets separated from "normal society" crimes I guess and it really shouldn't be like that.
Absolutely, big companies get away with treating their employees like shit way too often
can you mention the name of the movies which some scenes you used in this video? (sorry for my bad english)
Sure! Most of the scenes that i used are from an HBO series called "Tokyo Vice". Is that the one you were looking for?
@@anikihistory yes exactly. Arigato :3
@@abdullahalnoman2466 よかったねー！You're welcome 😁
Most companies nowadays will not have connections with the Yakuza. The Yakuza are not what they use to be. If you are found to be former/current member you will lose a'lot of societal privileges. Which include: ability to rent an apartment, find a job, open a bank account. This is obviously a problem hence, yakuza have lost a'lot of power in Japan. If they lose their numbers how are they going to be a strong influence in Japan? Hence why I think most companies nowadays do not have any link to yakuza. 70's, 80's and 90's is a different story.
I think, quickly declaring Konami to be a toxic environment just by the over-sensationalized Nikkei articles; both written by the same writer, is premature.
Jim Sterling reported on the articles, stating that his sources told him that the article embellishes quite a bit. Speaking to people who have worked with Konami employees, they shared that same sentiment.
There are current and former Konami employee reviews published online to read. Game journalist, Nick Monroe, has researched this matter. The Konami Condition is on his blog. My opinion is that you could have dug a little deeper. I'm not saying that Konami isn't toxic, because there's evidence that supports that as well. I just wouldn't have just used the Nikkei articles. Also, you didn't really need the Hideo Kojima segment. You made him a martyr and made the schism between developer and publisher seem one-sided.
On a different note, I think it was Nintendo's partnership with Konami for Mario Roulette (1991?) that kicked off Konami's involvement with the gambling business. But that's just another opinion.
I agree. I liked the video, it brought information I never imagined, and there was some fact-checking; but it did sound quite one-sided as a whole, it wasn't even mentioned if Konami (or Sega) issued a public statement regarding the accusations.
A little bit of context would also help to understand how much Konami differs from other Japanese companies, what's the threshold for black company, as the average work culture in Japan is infamously hardcore.
Since 90s, I knew Konami has ties with Yakuza. Only fools would think is not.
What’s the song you used in beginning 0:10 to 1:33????????????
It’s one night in neo kobe city from the Snatcher soundtrack
Amazing video love it
There is a saying in my country. If you haven't found dirt someone is good at theyr job.
Thank you! 🙏🏻
Contradiction. You said in your other video ties to Sega and Nintendo they were Yasaka ties, but in this video it’s stating that it isn’t that’s contradictory to your prior material.
To quote the great legend, Steak Bentley, "Was Tomokazu Fukushima silenced and murdered by the Yakuza? I'd say no. To avoid sounding like a fucking lunatic."
Told you all Yu-Gi-Oh was cool since day one but you wouldn't listen 😎
I can’t watch, the weird glitching graphic effect is makings me nauseous
Noted
Konami doesn't need to work with the Yakuza when they're already big enough and act like their own Yakuza.
Ima share this to some friends this like i did with the nintendo video
That's super helpful, much appreciated! 🙏🏻
please don't use the old film filter for entire videos of this length :T
Makes sense that they'd owe Yakuza money, considering everything they make is cash grabber garbage. I hope with every release that they'll change.
Not run by the Yakuza, run like the Yakuza 😂
Well said! 🤣
lol imagine saying konami make money from pachinko. When you actually look at their financials from 2015 to this day, almost 70% of their revenue and profit comes from digital entertainment aka video games. They make money mainly from asia and japan releases like yugioh, power pro and momotaro dentetsu that sells a lot in there.
More like KonamEA amirite
Kojima is not innocent and was VP of the company. Both can be bad.
Sorry to say, my dudes, but about 75% of businesses in Japan are all run by yakuza. You'd be hard-up to find one that isn't besides some little local mom and pop places.
So Hideo Kojima's a chump
Overrated
"The Pachinko theory is possible". There is no such theory. And a theory is not just possible, it's always proven fact. Otherwise, it's not a theory or you can't understand or apply. Just like the theory of gravitation. It's parts like formulas, laws and the force are "possible". The theory is true. A theory is always true.
Snitch💀
who ???
*YOU ARE THE SNITCH*
Louis Billups