Kanagawa cops: Company produced Puzzle & Dragons cheat software

KANAGAWA (TR) – Police on Thursday accused the president of a software company based in Yokohama of developing and selling cheat software for smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons. The arrest follows a similar case from earlier this year involving a student.

Kanagawa Prefectural Police arrested Wataru Ishida, 40, president of software firm Internal, and two suspects on charges including organized crime for developing and selling the backdoor software Ghost Router, which allows users to acquire items for free and power up characters in Puzzle & Dragons, NHK reports (Nov. 10).

All three suspects are denying the charges, police said.

Ghost Router garnered profits of at least 60 million yen over a one-year period through last August, police said, in Japan’s first criminal case involving organized criminal obstruction of a business.

GungHo Online Entertainment, which operates Puzzle & Dragons, told NHK that “these kinds of backdoor tools are actions that we consider to be a denial of the very spirit of play.”

“[Puzzle & Dragons] was designed for users to take the time to play and enjoy,” GungHo said.

GungHo released a similar statement in June when a university student was arrested in Kanagawa Prefecture for uploading cheat software for Puzzle & Dragons, the first to be arrested in Japan for hacking the game.