http://archive.is/kmBzn - Dangen Entertainment Warning #1
http://archive.is/68jQT - Dangen Entertainment's Rebuttal
http://archive.is/rQtsJ - Dangen Entertainment Warning #2
http://dangenwarning.wordpress.com - A Wordpress mirror of all the articles.
Hello, I am "Dangen Warning" or "DW" as I'd prefer to be referred to. I hope it's okay for me to post here. Please forgive me if I violate any rules, I'm not very familiar with ResetEra outside these threads and knowing Nayan enjoyed posting on here a lot.
As it seems to be a point of confusion for many, I'd like to reiterate that I am not Alex. They are in contact with me and allowed me to post the e-mails they received from Ben Judd. At the time, it was too painful for them to post the e-mails themselves, but I thought it was a crucial piece of evidence to start the story with. This seems to have lead to a lot of confusion about my identity and theirs.
How do I support the DE Dev??
You can't monetarily, not right now. Please just make sure people know about what Dangen Entertainment has done to him and his game. We're looking into solutions, and when things are all clear, we'll probably tweet about it.
What happened to the Medium posts?
I was sent a letter from Medium for the first one saying it violated their TOS and asked me to remove private communications in order to have the post unsuspended.
The second one was also deleted, plus a notice saying my account was suspended and would not be eligible for reinstatement.
This is fair, as I knew for the second post that it was going to be taken down. I don't have access to any other way to anonymously post long essays with images.
Where are the journalists?
There are some journalists, English and Japanese, who contacted me after the first Medium post and I believe some more articles will be going up shortly.
Prior to writing the Medium posts, I had actually contacted a few journalists. The impression I got was they were uninterested or too busy. Our projects weren't really important enough, and Ben Judd wasn't well known enough. One journalist even mentioned that she had enough "metoo" stories to chase after.
I don't blame these journalists. One Japanese journalist repeatedly told me that it was "shameful" that his publication didn't have the resources to pursue the story or to help me. I believe he was sincere, and the reality is, people like Ben Judd and companies like Dangen Entertainment are so widespread that people really do need to pick their battles. Even now I have firsthand knowledge of other people/companies that I would love to warn people about. Ultimately, I am still part of the whisper circle, but I hope I've encouraged others to try to break this cycle.
Why is Ben Judd important?
I want to explain something very important about Ben Judd that I don't think a lot of people understand about the story. I had tried to explain Ben Judd's importance in (DW-nightclub), but I can see now that I think people needed a very clear explanation on who Ben Judd even is, and why he's even important at all. He's not "just a creep", he's an extremely important person in the AAA games industry, in Japan and the West.
When Alex made their first tweets about Ben Judd back in August, Dangen Entertainment began to try and obfuscate his importance in the company and hide him from interviews. Ben Judd is not a "Co-founder" of Dangen Entertainment, he is literally the CEO and owner. Now they are doing this same tactic again, but on a larger scale that I will try to explain shortly.
Ben Judd is the "Resident Director" (basically the CEO) of the Japan foreign branch office of DDM Agency. DDM has tried to hide his role in the company very recently, but here is a web archive showing that he is one of the top three executives in the company, and the top executive of the Japan branch.
DDM Agency (
https://www.ddmagency.com/ ) is a huge AAA games agency that works with many well-known games and companies: Mighty No. 9 (Comcept), Bloodstained (505 Games), Devil May Cry (Capcom), Metroid (Nintendo), Metal Wolf Chaos (From Software & Devolver Digital), Sekiro (From Software & Activision), Azure Striker Gunvolt (Inti Creates), Silent Hill (Konami)... just to name a few.
Almost every AAA/AA company has some kind of relationship with Ben Judd or DDM Agency. He's bragged that his salary is over $20,000 a month. His work for DDM Agency is primarily where all his power and money come from, and his behavior (sexual harassment, power harassment) has touched every part of the games industry in Japan and the West.
Dangen Entertainment uses the same exact office as DDM Agency and many of its employees and resources, such as law firms and PR firms.
He also has one more company at this same office in the same room: "Capsulated Software". Capsulated Software pretends to be an "indie game development studio" when it is in fact funded and owned by Ben Judd. Capsulated Software develops "Tactical Galactical", a game which Ben Judd directs and is commissioning artists and programmers to work on for himself.
He was on the Board of Directors of the Japan Indie Games Association (JIGA), the committee that manages Bitsummit, the largest indie games event in Japan. John Davis, a former Dangen employee and known friend and supporter of Ben Judd is also still on the Board of Directors of JIGA, giving Ben a strong influence over Bitsummit. Sponsors of Bitsummit include Nintendo, Sony, Cygames, Unties, Raw Fury, IGN Japan, Famitsu, Twitch, LG, AMD.
Bitsummit recently announced they removed DDM as one of their sponsors. This still doesn't solve the problem, as
Dangen has remained as a sponsor.
Ben Judd uses this influence and multiple shell companies to sponsor visas for foreigners and sneak games with his influence into events meant for "indie games". While he makes over $200,000 a year, he makes multiple smaller companies, staffs these companies with friends (primarily foreigners), and pretends that these are "small indie companies" and uses his influence to prioritize their placement in events like Bitsummit and TGS, ahead of other games/groups.
Ben Judd wants to characterize the people speaking out against him as a hate mob lead by a jilted-ex (Alex). And honestly, I fear he will be successful, if people focus only on Ben being "creepy", whipping his balls out in public, etc. As horrible as that stuff is, there's quite frankly a lot of people who would just dismiss it as poor humor.
What I tried, and perhaps have failed to do, with my first two Medium posts was demonstrate how Ben Judd uses his considerable influence to harm and control as much as he can. He is incompetent, petty, and malicious. He has acquired a ridiculous amount of power for someone who frankly appears to have done very little competent work, and relishes in using and abusing it, for the sheer sake of doing so.
I am a woman and he made it clear he found me attractive, so he created or allowed to continue a situation in which the safety of my projects was uncertain and I was forced to stay in his good favor, or risk my friends and games being retaliated against if I ever made him upset. Demonstrably, this is what happened when I finally got tired of speaking with Ben.
With men, if DE Dev is any indication, he does the exact same thing. He cajoled or threatened DE Dev alternately until he finally reached his "limit", in which he saw fit to rub DE Dev's nose in his control over him, mocking his disabilities and refusing to relinquish control over his game and profits.
I did not write about a sloppy drunk weirdo who texts dick pics to his ex and thinks slapping his balls on the bar stool and waiting for anyone to notice is funny.
I wrote about a dangerous and powerful man who has and will use his power to embezzle, cheat, and harm others by his whim.
But he stepped down from Bitsummit and DDM was removed as a sponsor! This is a win!
No, it isn't. As long as EITHER Dangen or DDM remain in influence over Bitsummit as a sponsor (currently, Dangen is still listed as one of Bitsummit's sponsors), Ben Judd's presence at Bitsummit will remain. I repeat: Dangen is literally in the same room as DDM. Not in the same office building, in the same room. The average American kitchen is farther from the bedroom than Dangen is from DDM. So long as Ben Judd is still a part of DDM, he need only turn in his chair to touch Dan Stern on his shoulder.
He has not been removed in any meaningful way. He has only been hidden and protected.
