Nippon Ichi Software reportedly unable to pay staff after Disgaea RPG teething problems
Japanese developer issues warrant to sell stock at reduced price
Haydn Taylor
Staff Writer
Monday 20th May 2019

Nippon Ichi Software is reportedly unable to pay staff after being forced to remove mobile title Disgaea RPG from service.

According to Japanese site Ha-Navi (via Google translate), the developer has issued a warrant to shift stock at a reduced price of 90% to Daiwa Capital in order to raise emergency capital.

Launched on March 19, and developed in collaboration with Sony subsidiary ForwardWorks, Disgaea RPG has required long-term maintenance following multiple technical issues.

The game was taken offline in April for maintenance and, at the time of writing, is still down.

All play data before March 31 has been reset, and consumers are encouraged to request a refund for any items purchased before that date.
Source: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...thing-problems

Is Nippon Ichi Software not long for this world? Sure, these new problems echo the company's problems which they had back in 2008 - 2011. Back then people did not respond well to Disgaea 3 and how its PlayStation 3 graphics looked too similar to Disgaea 2's graphics on the PlayStation 2 and complained about the quality of the game. NIS responded by vowing to improve and betting the company's future on Disgaea 4, revamping the graphics to be higher resolution and making the game higher quality in all regards. This proved to be a successful strategy as Disgaea 4 sold very well and revived the company.

However, times have changed. NIS is having trouble adapting to the modern world and tactics of "mobile is all-important," "make your apps run on all current iOS and Android devices," "games 'have to' be free-to-play," "make your money on in-app purchases," and "port everything to run on everything else."

People were upset about how Nippon Ichi Software and NIS America handled the PC launch of "Disgaea 5 Complete." The game lacked all multi-player features which had been advertised for PC despite them being present in the PS4 and Switch ports. NIS America sold the game without these features on PC for a week before finally releasing a public statement which told everyone that they were never going to add the missing multi-player features to the game for technical reasons. This caused many people who bought Disgaea 5 Complete for Steam based on the promise of the inclusion of online features to feel like they had been duped by NISA.

Now we have these launching pains with Disgaea RPG, the Android and iOS free-to-play online multi-player Disgaea game. I mean, NIS can't even pay their own staff members, they're selling their stock at reduced prices, they are taking out high-interest business loans, and they are encouraging customers to ask Google for refunds for their in-app purchases. If all this is happening, then it really doesn't seem like they are going to be able to survive until Disgaea RPG is supposed to relaunch in several more months during either this September or later.

What are your thoughts about all this?