Japanese Game Exec Has Disappeared, Nobody Can Find Him

Tokyo-based Imageepoch made its name with role-playing games like Arc Rise Fantasia, Luminous Arc, and Last Ranker. This week, Imageepoch’s websites went offline, and no one can find company president Ryoei Mikage.

Picture: Kotaku Japan

Imageepoch was founded in 2005, and as this 2009 GameSetWatch interview shows, the company had ambitious plans. Above, you can see a photo of Mikage from our colleagues at Kotaku Japan.

As of posting, if you go to Imageepoch’s website http://imageepoch.co.jp/, you get this:

If you visit the company’s special JRPG site, http://jrpg.jp/, you get this:

Imageepoch developed the upcoming 3DS game Stella Glow which is slated for a June release in Japan. The Sega site for the game is still live. The Imageepoch one is not.

It’s so difficult to find the exec that the President of developer Idea Factory, Yoshiteru Sato, tweeted out that it could not get in touch with Mikage, and thus, had not choice but to make a public announcement via the social networking site in hopes of finding him.

Another tweet asked for those able to get in contact with Mikage to please contact Idea Factory. The reason Idea Factory wants to get in touch is in regards to publicity for upcoming PS Vita game Makai Shin Trillion, which is being developed by Compile Heart, a division of Idea Factory. It’s unclear what the game has to do with Imageepoch, and Mikage has not updated his Twitter since October 2014.

As reported on Otapol this past February, there were rumours that developers, many of the most talented ones, have been leaving Imageepoch. Worse yet, Otapol reported that the company’s offices were apparently for rent.

Today, Kotaku called Imageepoch’s phone number, but there was a recording saying it was no longer in use.