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On December 16, GamesIndustry.biz reported that the former CEO of Dangen Entertainement, the former VP of games talent agency Digital Development Management Agency (DDM) Japan, and former Capcom producer Ben Judd has been accused of "inappropriate behavior, harassment, and bad business practices". These same accusations have coincided with Judd's resignation from Dangen and dismissal from DDM.

Longtime Strider fans will remember Judd from the period prior to Double Helix's reboot, when Judd was between the critical and commercial success of Bionic Commando: ReArmed and the spectactular failure of 2009's Bionic Commando. During this period, he pushed hard for GRiN to get greenlit to make a Strider sequel, saying in both the Guardian and the Telegraph that Strider would be his first choice out of Capcom's classic catalogue to remake next. GRiN would ultimately go on to begin development on its take on Strider without Capcom's greenlight, which would never see the light of day after it went bankrupt.

He first appeared on the fandom's radar before that, during the launch of Bionic Commando, going down in infamy for his boast on Kotaku that,

We still have a f***ing ace up our sleeve. It's an ace, a f***ing ace. At [Tokyo Game Show], the Capcom booth stage is going to make people's balls pucker up. It's going to be big.

With that in mind, it's not difficult to believe that Judd would suffer from lapses in judgement; even his character references in the GI article above admit, while attempting to defend him, that Judd had committed several personal and professional faux pas for which their only defense was that, "the political correctness growth that has occurred in the US for the last 20 years has NOT occurred in Japan".

Complicating matters is how Judd's accuser, "Alex", was enmeshed in drama surrounding the release of Mighty No. 9 as its community manager, and thereby became caught up in several waves of online harassment. Alex's views concerning GamerGate, and behavior as community manager, did little to endear Alex to the game's Kickstarter backers; but that is no reason for anyone to have to endure the kind of abuse alleged in GI's article.

And that's not even beginning to touch the whole issue surrounding Dangen's treatment of indie developers.

It is a very muddy, very twisted situation. What is clear is that, while this is newsworthy in-and-of-itself, this topic hits a number of hot-button issues that basically come down to personal opinion and hearsay, at least as far as the public is concerned.

That said, this is a discussion best had elsewhere, so in the interest of avoiding turning this Wiki into a dumpster fire, comments on this post are disabled.

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