Rumor: Three Dozen Staff Leaving Team Ninja Alongside Itagaki

If you thought Tomonobu Itagaki’s motives for leaving Team Ninja and suing Tecmo were selfish, prepare to be proven wrong — 1UP is reporting that upwards of three dozen key members of Team Ninja’s staff will be following suit by leaving Team Ninja and filing a class-action lawsuit against Tecmo for unpaid bonuses for completed games.

While Tecmo has fired back, stating, “Tecmo would like to assure its loyal fans that Team Ninja, known for its top-selling and critically acclaimed Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive franchises, is intact and, as a matter of fact, has several new projects already underway,” one has to wonder just how many people are left that truly constitute the development group known as ‘Team Ninja.’ Journey was never the same after Steve Perry left, but imagine what it’d be like without the whole band. Yes, Tecmo still owns the IPs and can freely make all the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive games/ports it wants to, with or without Team Ninja (Dimps, we’re looking at you), but what will these games be without the people who made them hits?

That’s well put; I’d say most people realize that not every Call of Duty game is the same with Treyarch and Infinity Ward trading off releases. 1UP also points out that Tecmo faces further complications with this matter — “in Japan, any lawsuit filed against a publicly-traded company must be immediately reported to its shareholders on the same business day.” And that’s not something Tecmo did, as Itagaki filed his complaint on May 14, yet Tecmo didn’t fill in shareholders until as late as June 2.

As if the loss of Itagaki wasn’t bad enough, things are looking rather grim in the wake of Ninja Gaiden 2’s release.