A resident of Saitama, Japan is in police custody after sending death threats to Square Enix. A suspect named Toshiyuki Kan sent thirty-seven of them to the game maker last November.
Sadly, this isn’t a first for Square Enix. A 25-year-old man was arrested in spring 2019 for threatening to kill Square Enix employees. “I spent over 200,000 yen ($1,794) on the game and I didn’t get the [in-game] item I wanted so I sent the email out of revenge,” he said at the time. Later that summer, a 40-year-old man threatened to “do a repeat of Kyoto Animation,” which is a reference to the tragic Kyoto Animation fire that left thirty-five employees dead. “I was pissed after losing at a game, so I ended up sending the message,” the man said.
TBS News reports that for this latest incident, Kan reportedly sent the threats to the Dragon Quest of the Stars website, initially writing, “What do I need to do to win?” After that, the messages got threatening, with the suspect supposedly writing, “I’m totally going to kill the person who set up this trickery.”
The 39-year-old Kan has confessed, saying, “I couldn’t win, so I got pissed off.”