'We Tried to Think of Someone Who Makes You Go, 'This Guy's a Creep'': Yakuza/Like a Dragon Director Addresses Controversial Casting

IGN

6 février 2026 à 20:43

The director of Yakuza 3 Kiwami + Dark Ties has broken his silence on Ryo Ga Gotoku Studio's controversial hiring of Teruyuki Kagawa to play Goh Hamazaki, saying they needed someone who would make audiences think, "This guy's a creep."

This comes from an interview with Horii conducted by Japanese outlet GAME Watch, and independently translated by IGN. In the interview, Horii is asked directly about the decision to recast certain characters in Kiwami from their original Japanese actors. His general response as to why he recast both Hamazaki and Rikiya Shimabukuro is that while it would "certainly be safer not to recast them and avoid online criticism," the studio "felt there was no use being afraid."

Horii goes on to say that they based their decision on who they most wanted to see perform. When asked directly about Kagawa playing Hamazaki, this is what Horii had to say:

Hamazaki is a sleazy, persistent, and militant yakuza, right? Since he isn't an explosive character like Kanda, when we tried to think of someone who makes you go, "This guy's a creep," naturally it was Kagawa – that was the main factor. Kagawa's acting is fun to watch. Even when he's chopping a pig's feet off with a chef's knife, it has a slimy feel. That feeling permeates his performance, so it brings a freshness to the scene and made it feel really fun.

Kagawa's casting as Hamazaki has been met with anger from Yakuza fans due to the actor having been accused by multiple women of sexual assault, with one woman coming forward with what seems to be photographic evidence of the incident. In 2022, Kagawa admitted to and apologized for one of the incidents, but another of his accusers has said she received no apology.

Following the announcement of Kagawa's casting, Yakuza fans reacted in anger on social media, getting #REMOVEKAGAWA trending on multiple networks and creating a Change.org petition that at the time of this writing has nearly 10,000 signatures. Fans have accused RGG Studio of suppressing the #REMOVEKAGAWA hashtag and deleting comments referencing the issue on its official Instagram page. And a number of them have pointed out that Sega has recast actors for offenses in the past - Pierre Taki was recast in Judgment back in 2019 after he was arrested for cocaine possesssion.

Up to this point, neither RGG Studio nor Sega has offered official comment on Kagawa's casting, nor the accusations - Horii's answer is the first statement that's been offered on the subject. However, Sega did publish a trailer on its official YouTube after the wave of criticism, which introduced the Japanese voice cast and opened on a longer clip of Hamazaki. IGN reached out to Sega for additional comment ahead of this story, but did not hear back in time for publication.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

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Ubisoft Reportedly Cancels Rumored Cooperative Multiplayer Assassin's Creed Game 5 février 2026 à 22:25

Ubisoft Reportedly Cancels Rumored Cooperative Multiplayer Assassin's Creed Game

IGN

Par :Rebekah Valentine

5 février 2026 à 22:25

Ubisoft has reportedly canceled a multiplayer, cooperative Assassin's Creed title that has been in development at French studio Ubisoft Annecy.

This comes from a report by French publication Origami, which IGN has independently translated. According to the report, the project was codenamed "AC League", was originally conceived as a DLC for Assassin's Creed Shadows, and would have potentially taken place in the same feudal Japan era. The DLC would have involved four assassins joining forces to take on a series of scripted missions with up to four players that would have ultimately concluded the story told in the game's (canceled) Season Pass. You may have already heard of AC League if you pay close attention to Assassin's Creed gossip, as it was previously rumored last year in a report from Insider Gaming.

The project, Origami reports, was apparently fairly ambitious and was intended to serve as a baseline for future multiplayer features throughout the series, such as a return to a hybrid solo/multiplayer playstyle as existed in Assassin's Creed Unity or Black Flag (a remake of which has been rumored for some time now). However, as the AC League project progressed, directors at Ubisoft Annecy reportedly began to question whether it made sense to attach League to Shadows, as they worried it would take too long to make, and came up with a different plan that turned it into a small, standalone title borrowing pieces of the Assassin's Creed: Shadows open world. Development on this progressed with an intended invite-only alpha planned for May of 2026.

Unfortunately, AC League was allegedly just the latest victim of the ongoing upheaval at Ubisoft. For several months now, the company has been undergoing a massive restructure alongside major cost-cutting measures, canceling numerous projects, closing studios, and reorganizing its creative houses. It was to this restructuring that AC League fell victim, with leadership at Ubisoft Annecy being informed just last week that AC League was being canceled.

However, there is still a sliver of hope for the project, Origami reports. Apparently, a handful of Annecy employees have been selected to transfer the technical advancements the team made back into the company's proprietary Anvil engine, with the goal of eventually making it easier to add replayable multiplayer modes to future Assassin's Creed titles that would be less expensive to develop. Unfortunately, that leaves more than a quarter of the 270 individuals working at Annecy without a project at the moment, leaving a lot of lingering anxiety that layoffs may be coming next.

IGN has reached out to Ubisoft for comment.

Ubisoft's quarterly earnings will be reported next week, and all eyes are on the company to see if it can pull itself together amid some drastic financial times. Upon last reporting, the company had thrown out its previous fiscal year guidance for new, significantly reduced financial expectations, reflective of the fact that the company just closed two stories, laid off a lot of employees, and canceled six projects. It's also handed off its three biggest franchises to Vantage Studios, a newly-created business entity owned by Ubisoft but with a 25% stake from Tencent to help keep the lights on.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Article translation courtesy of Blythe Dujardin.