Summary
Kenshin Kazama, the 27-year-old man who allegedly made 39 threats to events organized byNintendolast year was recently convicted to one year in jail, plus four more years on probation. Kazama’s actions led to the postponement of twoNintendoevents, and the man was arrested in April 2024, confessing to the crimes soon after that.
Between August and November 2023, Kazama threatened Nintendo 39 times by using the company’s online inquiry forms. At the time, the yet unknown individual promised to bomb the events and to “kill everyone involved” in the competitions that would be happening, including staff, competitors, and attendants. Nintendo took these threats seriously and decided to postpone the competitions targeted by the man. The firstevent to be delayed was Nintendo Live Tokyo 2024, which would have tournaments of several Nintendo games, such asSplatoon 3andMario Kart 8 Deluxe. The other one was Splatoon Koshien 2023 National Finals, which would happen in December 2023, but was rescheduled to April 2024.
Now, the Japanese media outletNHK confirmed that Kenshin Kazama, arrested for the threats back in April this year, will spend one year in jail, and four years in probation after that. According to Judge Hiroshi Kawakami of the Kyoto District Court, who sentenced Kazama, the mansent Nintendo the threats due to frustration withSplatoon 3. Reports confirm that Kazama was getting increasingly frustrated by losing so much in the popular game. He also blamed Nintendo for “designingSplatoon 3poorly,” which would, in his opinion, lead to his constant defeats.
Man Who Threatened To Bomb Nintendo Events Convicted to One Year in Jail, and Four on Probation
In related news, Nintendo has recently revealed that thewinners of the recent Splatoon 3 World Championship will have their wins revoked. Members of Jackpot, the team that won the event, were discovered online making racist comments againstSplatoon 3players, as well as sharing offensive memes. As a condemnation of the team’s attitude, Nintendo decided to revoke their win.
Both in Japan and in the rest of the world, gaming events have been increasingly concerned with safety. For example,The Game Awards 2023 promised to improve securitylast year. However, this change was not motivated by the threats to Nintendo’s events, which happened at a similar time to this announcement, but by problems involving previous editions of the event itself. In 2022, someone invaded the stage during FromSoftware’s acceptance speech forElden Ring’s GOTY victory, which motivated the organizers to come up with harsher security measures.
Nintendo
Nintendo is a Japanese video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. While producing highly popular hardware consoles like the Switch, the company is known for its many first party video game franchises like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, and many more.
