After multiple persistent threats against attendees and staff that led to the cancellation of the major Nintendo Live event in Tokyo in December 2023, Japanese police have reportedly arrested the person responsible.
According to the Kyoto-based daily newspaper Kyoto Shimbun (via 4Gamer), police have an unnamed man linked to the threats in custody. The only details we know about the person right now, outside of the arrest, is that he’s in his 20s and is a local public servant in the Ibaraki Prefecture just northeast of Tokyo—where Nintendo Live 2024 would’ve been held. Police have not released a motive yet. And because the suspect allegedly sent death threats through Nintendo’s contact form on its website, he’s been accused of obstructing the company’s business.
Nintendo Live is a big event. It’s an E3-like, multi-day celebration of all things Nintendo, with tournaments, photo ops with your fave characters, live stage performances, and more. Usually held in Japan, Nintendo Live jumped to the states in September 2023, with the company intending to bring it back to the Land of the Rising Sun this past January. However, persistent threats made against both event goers and employees forced Nintendo to cancel it outright in December 2023. This disrupted some huge tournaments that were planned for the event, namely the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Online Challenge Final Stage, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe World Championship 2024, and Splatoon 3 World Championship 2024. Nintendo said it’d reschedule these competitions, and the entire Nintendo Live event but new dates have yet to be revealed.
Kotaku has reached out to Nintendo for comment.
Nintendo is wrangling with a Switch successor. It recently delayed the console’s release to 2025 to avoid the reseller market, while a testing center incurred some huge structural changes in order to “drive greater global integration in game development efforts,” a company spokesperson told Kotaku in late March.
Leave a Reply