Wanted: Dead was a 2023 action game from Soleil, the studio that came out of the ashes of Valhalla Game Studios. While it had some appealing elements to it, mainly the high-octane combat from veterans who worked on the Ninja Gaiden games, technical issues, a disjointed narrative, and flawed game design ultimately got this game MetaCritic scores between 57 to 61.
There’s a Reddit post titled “Why Wanted: Dead Failed” that revealed some surprising details about its development. The post itself has been deleted, but the reddit remains. One of the comments on it is from a reddit mod who says this:
“OP has provided the mod team evidence that leads us to believe that they would have insider access to the development of Wanted: Dead and what they have posted, in my personal opinion, could be credible.”
We ourselves have a copy of the text from that reddit. We won’t share every detail from this post, but we will discuss the broader claims of great interest, and what we can independently verify as best we can.
If Wanted: Dead looked like a disjointed, incomplete project, that’s because it is. There were multiple problems during and after development, including money issues, lead developers and management handling the project poorly, and translation issues between the staff. Ultimately, the game was shipped incomplete, with content would have filled up a lot of the game’s plot holes being cut.
The game’s publisher, 110 industries, was based in Russia, so its business was affected by the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine. Their deals to make Shenmue Zero, a prequel game, a Shenmue / Wanted: Dead crossover, and ultimately, Shenmue 4, all fell through as a result.
Unfortunately, there was real fallout from the financial failure of Wanted: Dead, though it wasn’t well known. This rumor claims that after it received poor reviews, 110 industries cancelled Soleil’s contract for another game, the mech sim Vengeance is Mine. 110 still owns Wanted: Dead, and a studio from Poland has been updating it since launch. Vengeance is Mine is apparently also still in development with another studio.
This rumor ends with a claim that we can verify to some extent. It claims that Yoshifuru Okamoto, who was a longtime Tecmo veteran, and stepped up to become Soleil’s CEO, was fired from the company. NicheGamer has a report that Okamoto resigned from being the CEO, but still works for Soleil as a business producer, dated April 2023. We can verify this with a press release from Solei’s website. There hasn’t been any news we can find since if Okamoto left Soleil or not.
While we won’t divulge all the claims in this rumor, it paints a sad picture for video game development in Japan, particularly for smaller studios. Soleil, FKA Valhalla Game Studios, was one of the few truly independent game studios in Japan.
While we’ve heard stories of big Japanese companies pushing their employees around, it seems that similar situations can happen even in smaller companies. The issues here didn’t just harm the games that were being made, but the people who were making them. In that sense, the issues that occur in game development around the world are unsurprisingly, and unfortunately, the same.
If there’s anything sadder from this than the possibility that there could have been an actual top notch Wanted: Dead, or more Shenmue games, it’s that these devs are now stigmatized for making bad games, when the issues with making them where not entirely their fault.
