A week ago, actor and musician Pierre Taki was arrested in Japan for using cocaine, which violates the country's very strict drug-control law. Following the incident, SEGA announced that it was voluntarily halting shipments of Judgment in Japan, where the character Kyohei Hamura is not only voiced by Pierre Taki, but also modeled on the actor's appearance.
In a press release, SEGA stated:
"We received the arrest report and are currently confirming the facts, but for now we are voluntarily halting shipments of the game to stores and suspending digital sales [of Judgment], as well as deleting posts related to the game and its official website. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers and everyone involved."
Overreaction or Common Sense?
All of this generated considerable controversy. On one hand, many people worried that it would delay the game's Western release, which was scheduled for June 25, arguing that they did not care whether the actor used drugs or that "nobody here knows who he is." On the other hand, SEGA is a Japanese company and therefore needed to minimize the damage this could cause to its image among the Japanese public by taking this measure, since drug use is viewed extremely negatively there. Even if Western audiences do not know the actor, releasing the product in the West without changes could harm the company's image in Japan, but until then we did not know what it would do to address the situation.
Those who feared that the game would be canceled or delayed here, however, no longer need to worry. SEGA announced that the character's actor and voice actor will be replaced in the Western version of the game, and that it will still be released on the previously announced date of June 25, 2019. It has not yet been confirmed whether the game will be rereleased in Japan with the new actor, but it is very likely, since it had been available for only four months and SEGA does not want to lose sales.
Images and trailers featuring the character were temporarily removed from SEGA's official channels, but new versions will be made available later.
History Repeats Itself
It is worth remembering that the same thing happened with the PS4 version of Yakuza 4, in which SEGA replaced the character model and voice actor for Tanimura after his career in Japan was also affected by suspicions of drug use. Yakuza 4, however, launched with the changes in Japan from the beginning, while Judgment was released there in December 2018, and physical copies of the game featuring Pierre Taki are now being sold at high prices on eBay.
Disney also took the same approach with the Japanese version of Kingdom Hearts III, in which Taki voices Olaf, the charismatic snowman from the film Frozen. His voice will also be replaced in the Japanese dub of Frozen 2.
Judgment arrives on PlayStation 4 on June 25 in the Americas and Europe.
