Yusuke Ogiso, the CEO of Tokyo-based software developer OGIX, recently blew the whistle on domestic mobile game company Poppin Games. He alleges that by failing to pay nearly 200 million yen (around $1.26 million USD) in outsourcing fees related to four games, Poppin Games drove OGIX into financial ruin, leading to 70 full-time employees losing their jobs.
Ogiso’s statement came on August 28, after it was announced that Poppin Games would be signing a new agreement with major game company CyberStep to jointly develop licensed games. He called the announcement “ridiculous” considering Popping Games’s liabilities towards his own company, announcing that he would be lodging a formal protest with CyberStep against the agreement.
In a follow-up post on X and interview with YouTuber Nakaido, Ogiso explained that between November 2023 and April 2025, Poppin Games commissioned OGIX to develop four live-service mobile games based on popular licensed IPs, like the Mashle: Magic and Muscles anime and the Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian series. While Poppin Games did pay OGIX for base development fees, Ogiso alleges that the company has failed to pay months’ worth of server costs, operational expenses, and revenue sharing.
The two parties are currently in an ongoing lawsuit over the matter, with Ogiso alleging that to this day, Poppin Games is the only side receiving revenue from the games, while his own company faces ballooning debt and has had to lay off 70 full-time employees. Meanwhile, Poppin Games’ legal representative has allegedly told OGIX that, “It’s not that we don’t have the money, but we don’t want to pay because we want to invest it in other games. We intend to pay once we make money from those other games.”
OGIX, on the other hand, has kept the games in question running at minimum cost, hoping to recoup at least some of the expenses through revenue-sharing. Ogiso also mentions that since the games use licensed IPs, he did not want to risk causing issues with the rightsholders.
At one point, when, as Ogiso puts it, Poppin Games’s “bad faith behavior escalated,” his company decided to stop updating the games temporarily, which was reported as being “due to a bug” to players. In response, Poppin Games allegedly pleaded with OGIX not to shut down services, promising to put together a repayment plan for the unpaid fees. “They showed us their finances again, we worked out a plan together, signed a repayment agreement, and brought the services back online,” Ogiso wrote. “In the meantime, I continued covering the costs out of my own funds until they could carry out that plan. But they never did. I ended up using all of my own funds to pay our employees, leaving us in a position where we couldn’t even afford the legal costs of the lawsuit.”
Despite being in the midst of this alleged dispute, Poppin Games has exhibited at Tokyo Game Show 2026 and announced the previously mentioned joint business with CyberStep. Notably, a couple of days after the initial announcement, CyberStep stated that it would be cancelling the agreement after all due to “circumstances that have come to light.” While the statement does not explicitly mention so, the decision is possibly related to the OGIX dispute and protest lodged by Ogiso.
