Former Konami Composer Awarded 40,000 Yen in Steam Pilots Case
Kotaku reports Motoaki Furukawa, the former Konami composer behind the likes of Policenauts, Snatcher and the Nintendo 64 version of Castlevania, and Pixel Co., a small Nintendo Switch-focused Japanese dev team, lost their respective legal battles against each other regarding the abandoned crowdsourced shoot ’em up Steam Pilots.
Steam Pilots was crowdfunded via Japanese crowdfunding site Makuake through two separate campaigns created in 2019, which raised a combined 11,022,700 yen. In January 2022 Pixel Co. director Hidekuni Sasaki revealed development had ceased after allegedly not receiving any payment in the two years they’d worked on the project; a Makuake representative said the total from both campaigns had been fully passed to Furukawa.
Pixel Co. sued Furukawa in March 2022 seeking to recoup lost development costs, and Furukawa countersued in 2023 seeking compensation for damages and alleged emotional distress.
Japan