Nintendo death threats suspect has been sentenced
Suspended for four years.
UPDATE 26/07/24: A Eurogamer reader has reached out to clarify some of the wording from yesterday's report, regarding the man who threatened Nintendo staff and his sentancing. Our reader kindly explained the Kyoto District Court has sentenced Kenshin Kazama to a year's prison sentence, suspended for four years.
This means, unless he commits some other offense, it's likely he will not be jailed immediately for threatening Nintendo. The original story continues below.
ORIGINAL 25/07/24: A man who sent almost 40 threatening messages to Nintendo, including death threats, has been sentenced to one year in prison and four years of probation by Kyoto District Court.
As reported by Japanese newsite NHK, Kenshin Kazama - a 27-year-old employee of Hitachi City - was accused of forcible obstruction of business after sending 39 threats using the inquiry form on Nintendo's website.
These threats were sent between August and November last year.
As reported in April, the threats sent during this time included messages such as "I'm going to make you regret releasing such a crappy game to the world" and "I'm going to kill everyone involved".
The sender also threatened to "kill the people at the venue" if Nintendo held its Splatoon Koshien 2023 National Finals that December. As a result, Nintendo took measures to ensure everyone's safety by cancelling both this Splatoon event and its Nintendo Live Tokyo 2024 event, which was planned to run in January of this year.
At the time of this announcement, Nintendo said it had received "persistent threats targeting our employees" which had also "spread to spectators", but did not share specifics.
In his ruling on the 24th, Judge Hiroshi Kawakami said "the defendant was frustrated by the fact that he continued to lose in online matches of Nintendo games", and that he committed the crime as a way "to relieve stress".
The judge called the crime both "persistent" and "vicious".