Something is rotten in Dangen Entertainment.
And his name is Ben Judd.
This thread has a VERY HEAVY CONTENT WARNING for the following: sexual harassment, racism, sexual assault, harassment, abuse, gaslighting
tl;dr version: Ben Judd, CEO of Dangen Entertainment, steps down after numerous allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse as well as multiple reports of indie devs being swindled by Dangen. Judd, however, has still not apologized to his victims or stepped down from his other position of power at Digital Development Management and Dangen has not made good on money owed of said swindled indie developers.
A complete (as best I can tell) timeline:
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Itâs been an open secret for a while that Ben Judd, CEO of Dangen and former Capcom translator, has been⌠to put it mildly⌠a gross dude. On August 27th, when allegations around Alec Holowka were being brought to light, Alex (aka @dirtbagboyfren on Twitter), an artist and game designer with history in the Japanese indie scene and had worked with Judd on titles like Mighty No. 9, posted the following thread: https://twitter.com/dirtbagboyfren/status/1166544727849623552
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While those allegations didnât upend everything, they did empower others to speak out against Judd and his company. In September, the developer of Devil Engine, an indie game that was being published by Dangen, tweeted (which have since been taken down) and posted on the gameâs itch.io pageâs comments that they had been ghosted by the publisher and were seeing zero royalties for their game.
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On November 23rd, an anonymous reddit post allegedly from another indie developer working with Dangen who is under NDA reports similarly getting hassled by Dangen.
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On November 29th, a Medium post was posted by an anonymous source referred to as The Writer. The post was later taken down by Medium, but there exists an archive of the lengthy article. It contains a lot of receipts from the Devil Engine and Fight Knight developers regarding Dangen and some creepy emails Judd had sent Alex. Itâs a 40+ minute read, but I encourage you to read it if you want the full picture of whatâs going on. Suffice to say, itâs thorough and does not look good for Dangen or Judd.
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The Medium post leads to a giant outburst of voices coming forth on twitter, including from indie developers and NB & women developers who have unfortunately worked with Ben. Included in those are voices of support for the victims from across the gaming industry, including at least one Dangen employee.
https://twitter.com/indigo_silk/status/1200659083113779201
https://twitter.com/shonyaku/status/1201334805243125760 -
Dangen Entertainment releases a counter Medium article. It doesnât address any of the sexual assault/harassment allegations at all and instead just tries to discredit the character of the authour of the original Medium article and nitpick. I believe Itâs not really worth going through, but for posterity here is the archive.
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IGN Japan and US|Gamer write articles regarding the allegations, including contacting more developers anonymously who corroborated with the Medium article and Alexâs experiences.
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On December 7th, Alex, facing harassment and backlash for their part in the article, released a large collection of personal information about their past relationship with Judd, detailing his abuse, harassment, gaslighting, etc. Severe CW on this one. They
had a translator associated with the story post both the english original and japanese translation: https://twitter.com/OnTakahashi/status/1204431121154363392 -
The next day a second Medium post is released by the anonymous developer.. The article largely outlines the shady dealings of Dangen in the days since the first article, some clarifications to address the nitpicking of Dangen, outlining more of their own dealings with Ben Judd and the Dangen staff, and just a whole heaping pile of more âBen Judd is a massive creepâ evidence.
Which leads us up to the last 24 hours, when Dangen Entertainment tweeted out that Ben Judd would be stepping down as CEO and Nayan Ramachandran would move from full time to freelance. The company would be restructuring accordingly:
This, predictably, tried to shift the spotlight off of the company to Ben while not really addressing any of the problems.
The response from those affected has not been optimistic.
https://twitter.com/Sorcerobe/status/1204710051862085632
https://twitter.com/OnTakahashi/status/1204799241681428480
https://twitter.com/dirtbagboyfren/status/1204701515664900096
https://twitter.com/dirtbagboyfren/status/1204715055217905665
https://twitter.com/amythan2019/status/1204712072015044609
https://twitter.com/dirtbagboyfren/status/1204920359268405248