There was a lengthy, 42-min read posted by an anonymous developer on November 29th, 2019 who had worked with the localization and publishing outfit Dangen Entertainment. The anonymous developer made some fairly strong accusations against the company regarding abuse and misconduct. Well, members of Dangen Entertainment responded with their own Medium piece, breaking down what was factually correct and incorrect about the original claims.
Dangen’s response was published on December 3rd, 2019 shortly after Medium removed the original piece from the anonymous developer who made the claims against Dangen Entertainment. Nevertheless, word began to spread around about the piece after Medium removed it, with conspiracies formulating about the reasons for its removal.
To put any claims or misconceptions to rest, the team at Dangen took an opportunity to address each and every point made in the original piece, and go through it to the best of their ability to add clarity to the situation.
They summarize the intent of their rebuttal near the top of the article, explaining…
“Evidence will be used to disprove THE WRITER’s false accusations. Dangen asserts that THE WRITER has ulterior motives, a gross misunderstanding of how Japanese money transfers work, and collaborated with others to not only damage Dangen but also to harm other developers that did not obey them. Dangen abjectly refutes THE WRITER’s sensationalist titles that suggest Dangen has A) robbed developers and that any Dangen member is B) a sexual predator. There is no evidence to support either of these claims. Many of THE WRITER’s other claims are 100% false, and will be proved as false below. Developer and publisher relationships are stressful at times, but Dangen has always professionally striven to provide the best publishing services they can for their developer partners.”
It would be unfeasible for us to go through every single detail of the rebuttal, since it’s extremely lengthy (around half an hour to read through) and according to analytics most people check out of OAG’s content by the 500-word mark, so I’ll try to skim through the essential details and summarize the important parts.
They debunk most of all the allegations regarding the mishandling of Fight Knight and Devil Engine. They also provide receipts in the form of communications, e-mails, and chat logs to back up their point.
They do admit to fault in a few areas, specifically not capitalizing on some of Steam sales, and not properly communicating how some music would be used for promotional purposes.
They also acknowledge some issues with contract loop holes that were later amended, but debunked that they used slapdashery to get Fight Knight onto the Nintendo Switch.
They also debunk that they spend more time promoting themselves than their content.
Now, I can attest that Dangen Entertainment does not spend more time promoting themselves than their client’s content. If this were Devolver Digital? You could make an argument for that. But I didn’t even know Dangen was involved with The Takeover and I’ve written about that game on several occasions and even purchased it on Steam. I remember us covering games like Devil Engine and Fight Knight but Dangen Entertainment was never the spotlight of those features.
Maybe other outlets have a different experience, but Dangen just seemed to focus on promoting the games rather than themselves, from my point of view.
Also, they keep a fairly low profile. Outside of this most recent drama, I don’t believe we’ve ever had to write about misconduct or misappropriation or corruption involving Dangen, especially given the amount of games they’ve been involved with if you check out their official website.
I would consider that a fairly sterling record, by the way.
The rest of the Medium post covers the allegations of abuse, the supposed missed payments, and contract obligations. For the most part they provide receipts to back up their side of the story, including showing that they do pay on time.
If you were interested in reading about all of the drama you can do so by visiting the Medium article and judge for yourself which side to believe.
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