Nintendo Issues Official Statement Regarding The Allegations Made Against Nintendo Russia CEO Yasha Haddaji

Ouch getting a write up that far along in your career? Dang that is more embarrassing than getting fired imo. He better be on his best behavior now that he is in the crosshairs though. One more scandal (or at this point a sneeze) and he's out.

Well I suppose it's a good thing that most of the stuff he was accused of turned out to be false. Still, it sounds like his employees really don't feel safe in the workplace while he's there. I'm sure that just one more loss of temper will result in him losing his job. Hopefully everything works out one way or another!

Well... that seems mild, but he probably didn't deserve ALL the ire he got. When I saw him a few times on nintendo events he did help out people himself. I would say the problem was not only him, but the whole Nintendo of Russia lack of resources (Yasha also being one of them).

Wow, there are loads of incidents that i've read about, but Nintendo says it is within their guide lines?
I definately don't want to work in Nintendo

Hes a psychopath, but ofcourse they always get a ”warning”..

people were probably afraid to speak up

Wow people get away with anything apparently. Why would you want him at your company?

Who is seriously surprised? It's a Japanese company, even if a Russian branch, and in Japan the superior is always right and the person on the lower rung of the ladder should just smile and nod and do what they're told.

Cya
Raziel-chan

He should have been kicked to the curb day one. Like most people would in his job. It's not like he's Gordon Ramsey

Plus if he behaved like that on a LIVE STREAM then just imagine how he is behind closed doors. Ridiculous

Nintendo normally go to extremes to prove that they are family friendly and then we’ve got this.

First off - we don't know if the allegations are false - all we know is that Nintendo's investigation did not substantiate the abuse claims. That is all. It does not mean those things did not happen. Let's not go all nuts on the accusers - what they are claiming might be actually true. Might not - but might be as well.

This was probably the first draft of the report:

Our investigation has revealed that Nintendo Russia is located in Russia and as a result, everything is crazy and done with brute force. When we stopped by Mr Haddaji's office, once he climbed down from his pet bear and stopped juggling axes to explain the situation, we looked around and came to the conclusion that this is as good as it gets in this country."

@Zuljaras It says they haven't been substantiated by the evidence, not that the allegations were completely false. Given what has been recorded on camera, it's pretty clear that there's a problem there. It would be a bit ridiculous to reprimand him for his aggressive behaviour and then reprimand workers for spreading 'false' allegations about his aggressive behaviour, wouldn't it?

I don't know what personal issues this person is facing. I think if a person is facing hard times, they should let a temporal subtitude while the person deals with whatever issues he is facing.

I think it's disgusting that Nintendo let this man off.

A slap on the back of the neck, in other words. And water under the bridge.

@Razzy Combine what you said with the fact that Russia has a culture of respecting "strong man" figures who are allowed to get away with murder (not necessarily figurative) as long as they get results and maintain a sense of pride for the loyal subjects.

@SamusLv7 I completely agree with you but in this case it sounds like it was just his personality and he'd been particularly abusive to a number of employees. Imagine how he behaves behind closed doors?

There is probably a reason the other allegations weren't brought up as criminal charges. While he might have been unpleasant to some employees, nothing illegal or policy-breaching seems to have taken place.

Here's hoping he takes the critique to heart, and seeks to straighten out his act, so that people can enjoy their work, and perhaps will remember him a bit more fondly.

@Rob3008 True, I tried to see a pacific solution but I think you are probably right.

There was a enough on that video to sack him 100% - no excuse for the stuff he said and you cant fake that attitude. Very disappointed Nintendo have turned a blind eye to this, this is how people like him get away with it.

@Pod Here's another consideration. I had two bosses while I was in the military prone to fits of rage. One was just a psycho and needed to be removed (he eventually was). The other one, every time I saw him blow up and start yelling, his subordinates really had royally screwed up. I do think his anger was a problem, but he also ran a tight ship and the squadron went downhill after he moved on. So which version of angry boss was Mr Haddaji?

Well, unlike all us commentors, Nintendo was able to address anyone that came forward with concerns in that workplace. That’s their decision for now, I suppose.
Not my circus, not my tigers.

@nessisonett the big thing I noted there is the bit at the end basically going "from henceforth nintendo of Europe will give more support to nintendo of russia" which between the lines may well indicate he's on probation in all but name with likely some of even his own responsibilities being sent to Nintendo of Europe instead with him likely going to have to be on his best behavior whenever an overseer/etc from NoE is around.

Especially as I suspect NoE to be rather bigger than "Nintendo of Russia" and likely have more influence(heck I recall a lot of indies voicing how they had an easier time getting into the global eshop by going to Nintendo of Europe rather than even Nintendo of America who seemed to be focused on dealing only with publishers types at the time... meaning NoE had enough influence to get these titles published even on the American eshop at the end of the day even when NoA didn't even want to speaks to the involved devs originally).

But what does Vlad Putin think about all this..LOL

@Stocksy considering the bit about "from henceforth Nintendo of Europe shall provide more support to Nintendo of Russia" I don't think he got off quite that easy since I'll suspect a lot of that European "support" will be very much there to watch him... and report on him if need be since I -very- much doubt he'll have the power to fire a NoE employees unlike employees of the Russian branch he likely could give such threats to in exchange for their silence/etc.

Basically Nintendo probably was indeed unable to get employees(whose jobs depends on the guy) too repeat their allegation but they're nonetheless likely going to put him on a leash anyway which may well force him to be on his best behavior since I don't think the European employees will put up much with that kind of crap since their own job won't be dependent on him and him alone.

Should've been fired. This man is not right in the head.

I'd honestly would rather have him get fired that for him to stay given the fact that his track record on business and relations with his employees are pretty poor. If he's staying, then I hope Nintendo of Europe will keep a close on him and make the reforms necessary to make Nintendo of Russia safe

That's disgusting. I feel sorry for his employees, gonna have to keep working under constant fear and pressure.

To those of you harping on Nintendo for not being harder on him, they stated clearly they were not able to substantiate all the accusations against Haddaji. If they can't prove those allegations then the best course of action is to keep a better eye on him and make sure he stays straight

Pathetic. To be expected, but still pathetic.

With that much stuff against him, I would fire him on the spot.

Soooooo nothing got resolved? So much for "thorough". I feel sorry for all the folks that have to keep working under this clown. Shame on you Nintendo for not getting this taken care of. Poor,poor employees.

@Rhaoulos Nice contribution to the conversation.

Also to those saying he should be fired keep in mind they can't just fire him on the spot without having a replacement ready

@Wolfgabe They can and I'm pretty sure the evidence from the Live Stream should have been enough.

I know If I had done that in my job I would have been out on my arse.

Mr Yuriy Litvinenko (the author of the investigation) can't accept that he got it wrong.
Such good news.

I recently dealt with someone exactly like this man at my workplace and they eventually got the punishment they deserve. If he really did do all those things mentioned by other people, he will get his punishment in due time, not a slap on the wrist.

@SuperJoon Keep in mind if you are going to fire someone its important to have a suitable replacement lined up first

@Wolfgabe lol yes they can. They would just either promote someone else to do his role or temporarily get another member of staff to cover while they hire someone permanent.

I’m glad Nintendo acknowledges the lack of resources put in Russia. I hope we do get to see a better infrastructure for that Russian scene, especially with Nintendo constantly releasing Online Competitive games like Splatoon 2 and Smash

@Mogster Do you work in business? Also finding a replacement can be much trickier than it looks

Although the comment by Nintendo says Europe with be supporting nintendo Russia in releasing products, I really do think it also means keeping tabs on them too. They know this many people wouldn't come forward if none of it was true. It seems to me this is their way of keeping a loose canon in check because they haven't found the evidence to do anything more. I truly hope he isn't doing all the things people have said, because it would be an unacceptable, awful place to work.

Well no surpises there I guess. People were defending him here last time because what he was accused of was "cultural" differences.

Weird that Nintendo didn't just fire him and completely bow down to the Internet mob as I expected it would.

Or did it in fact bow down to the real mob. Dun dun dunnnnnn!

But I guess when it comes to superiors at least, Nintendo is a bit more rational and considered with this kind of stuff and doesn't just go firing people for the tiniest incident because a group of plonkers online got all up in arms over it and called out for a public execution.

PS. It's really easy for people to make exaggerated and false accusations, and other than the shouting incident that was actually on camera in this case, we shouldn't just automatically believe everyone and every claim made against someone else. Because people can and do lie, and they can and do often distort things in their minds after the fact, and that's just something we all need to keep in mind every time we're about to start lighting the torches, especially when it's so easy to get heated after some female claims some kind of "sexual misconduct"--just one of the many accusations thrown at this guy--of which many recent cases have now been proven to be examples of utterly false accusations, which means a lot of women are absolutely willing and ready to abuse the system when it suits their needs and ruin innocent men's life's and careers on a whim.

If he was a peon he'd be fired in any other business.

They're dealing with it according to the Japanese honour culture, he's said sorry so it's all OK now.

Should have fired that scum bag.

Disappointing. Deserves to be fired.

@ALinkttPresent it didn't turn out to be false. they just couldn't find more evidence. that's not the same as proving the allegations to be false.

@Ryu_Niiyama Its generally three strikes so I think he can do as he wishes still.

BS - workers in Russia are afraid to speak out against their superiors. You never know what kind of contacts this ass has and what kind of repercussions they may have to face. They should have fired him. shame on nintendo

One of the main problems in the world right now, just accusing someone is enough. Doesn’t matter about evidence, investigations or a trial because he/she said you did it so must be true.

@Bunkerneath They let him off because they don't believe the stories to be true, not because they think the behaviour in the stories is acceptable.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like Nintendo ARE absolutely sure he's a crappy and abusive boss, but they couldn't find hard evidence for the other complaints against him so they are just muzzling him instead of firing him.

It's definitely not good news for him that another branch of Nintendo is being brought in to "assist". What that really means is, we're not technically firing you but your power trip is officially over.

So basically he just got a slap on the wrist and had to say sorry. That seems a bit light.

@impurekind Please sit down with that nonsense....

Any "manager" with respect for his company would've resigned to not tarnish the image of the company anymore to be honest. Is anyone gonna take NOR serious after NOE didn't fire him?

A company that investigates itself finding no wrongdoings you don’t say?

I suppose a formal warning for someone of that rank speaks volumes in the business world. Granted, I'm not privy to all the details and therefore can't really say for sure if Nintendo should have done more. Hopefully this guy cleans up his act now that he'll be more closely supervised....At least that's what I gather from this article.

@JackEatsSparrows: The variation I've heard is "Not my circus, not my monkeys", but I suppose any animal will work. XD

Now if he was WHITE he would've been out faster than you can say toxic masculinity.

If a worker slags off their boss, the boss has absolute right to fire them.

Boss slags off the workforce though? Meeeh.

The internet will raise a massive stink over this for sure! But then again he isn't WHITE.

https://twitter.com/ylitvinenko/status/1085185831424290817

Follow-up.

You may think that the employees ought to prevail~
And be tucked some place all safe and sound~
Yasha Haddaji captured and rotting in jail~
His harassment nowhere around~

But there's no happy endings, not here and not now~
This tale is all sorrows and woes~
you dream that justice and peace win the day~
But that's not how the story goes~

Here I wrote a song, (totally not ripped from A Series of Unfortunate Events)

Seems like a cop out to me, no smoke without fire and all that

Lol who is going through this article and mass disliking every post? Seems like 80% of comments have a dislike and I have never seen anything like that on this website. I know this can be considered a controversial topic but none of the comments seem too outlandish, at least compared to the norm around here.

@UmbreonsPapa It's only "nonsense" to you because you don't know any better.

I think most commenters here are missing the last sentence:
"Going forward, Nintendo of Europe will be providing more resources to Nintendo Russia to support their efforts to bring Nintendo products and experiences to Russian players."

This guy was given Japan's version of the worst punishment of all: A window office.

That's a polite way of saying he still runs Nintendo of Russia, but Nintendo of Russia has been neutered and put on display and will now simply be a subservient office of NoE, and he gets the be the face of the neutering indefinitely.

It's so good to see that there is a place where angry social media mob won't decide on important matters.

Even this page had published a seriously biased article without even asking the other side - which was shocking to me.

Reading all of these comments, I must ask.... whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?"

Seriously, I hate to get political, but it's like progressive/Democrat/socialist/SJW crazy disease is spreading.

If he truly did something wrong, he should be fired and pursued to fullest extent of the law. However, their investigations showed no merit to the allegations against him, and while I agree he SHOULD NOT have lost his temper and treated employees terribly, that's more of an HR issue, not a law issue.

@nintendork64 They had him verbally berating his employees on tape. What more do you need?

Good. No mob rule. Regardless of what we've heard in one incident, we don't even know any of the context. Everything after that, allegations and what not, is just going after a scalp.

Let him stay, promote him for resilience of he lasts. The last thing I want to have happen to people is being scalped by a crowd.

Any of us can have jokes, misunderstandings or actual behaviors taken out of context. And even if you make a mistake, we all do. We all sound like an ahole on somebody's tape.

Looks like he was wrong. It also looks like others tried to frame him after.

This guy has a job a lot of people can probably only dream of. He must have a lot of good and unique competences in order to get away with this.

The dude looks gentle in that pic

People really do like their pitchforks, don’t they?
Innocent until proven guilty? Who cares! Guilty because I say so!

We don’t know anything except for a video on the Internet without any context. Sure, he has rage fits that don’t belong on a person in his position and he got a very severe punishment because of that (and yes, from a business point of view, it was a severe punishment).

We know nothing, only that the investigation didn’t prove anything. Who are we to think that he should be fired when we don’t have any prove at all?

Anyone can and will make false accusations for any number of reasons and the mob do likes some controversy to spice their days.

Let me put that into a different light. Has anyone think that maybe this was just a set up to make him lose his job? He got angry and did something inexcusable but then the employees got angry and decided to accuse him of all sort of things just as revenge.
How is the situation above any less believable than the accusations directed at him?

I’m not saying he was innocent, of course, I’m saying that if the investigation didn’t prove anything then I (we) have no reason to believe otherwise because we know literally nothing.

But anyway, logic is not a part of the Internet so...

Though I almost always believe the worst about corporate executives, Nintendo is the one company I wish I could hope better of...

@BenGrimm: Yes, that definitely is a problem in the world, and despite actual facts, reputations get tarnished, and destroyed. People need to learn to look beyond surface issues, appearances, and consider to themselves if there is more to why a person acts, talks, or lives a certain way, than is usually acknowledged by most others. Things are not always what they seem, is a shorter way of putting/thinking it.

@PuppyToucher: I too, noticed that. At first I thought it was a glitch, but not everyone has a dislike.

@Everyone_Else: We don't know all the details. We only know a portion of.

I am almost certain any high ranking executive at NCL, NOA, or NOE would immediately be fired if he/she did a fraction of what Haddaji did on that 2017 Mario Kart stream. Let's not even mention the other more serious allegations of workplace misconduct.

Pretty disappointed in NOE for this. I guess NOR is that irrelevant to them, to the point where having this kind of a leader is acceptable.

@ALinkttPresent
I don't believe "turned out to be false" is a wise choice of words.
It just was not proven enough to be considered official.
Most cases of harrassment and abuse end up never being proven legally even if they are true.
I am not saying it was all true, but nobody can say it was all untrue either.
I personally know several people who suffered abuse of various types and "cannot prove it", of course, because they did not prepare beforehand to have it recorded or evidenced. That's how this world goes.

This is disgusting and I am very ashamed to be a fan of company that gives someone nothing more than a warning for abusive behavior. I know it's pretty much legal to work someone to death in Japan, but mistreating staff is not okay in the rest of the world. Nintendo of Russia employees deserve better.

Well done Nintendo.
Have all the people jumping to conclusions based on accusations alone..... never met actual liars or something? There are quite a lot of them.
I think once you've been lied to about something serious, you can never go back to just taking people's words for things. Obviously lots of people here haven't experienced that (or more likely: haven't yet figured out what they've been lied to about)

@IHateTombs lol his apology might as well have been I am sorry for throwing trash on your desk instead of calling you trash. But yeah big business and half-assed penalties for their untouchables are quite a tandem. Might as well be the invisible Man.

@frogopus I’m sure Mr Hadaji has friends in high places who are looking out for him too. Let’s not forget our good friend Nepotism.

So basically, nothing happened and he can just continue doing what he's been doing?
Nintendo are sometimes really strange.

A CEO losing his temper like that in public should usually be enough to get fired.

@Zuljaras The truth is more like the accusers being afraid to speak out in fear of retaliation. It's Russia after all.

So now he's on a very short leash. If he got fired, he'd have a very, very bad resume in his portfolio with no job. He has to answer to NoE now.

He f**** up and he now his coworkers will look at him in a bad light.

Working in a hostile environment on all sides is worse tha getting axed.

His hairstyle is INFURIATING.

And this is exactly why the Me Too movement exists. People don't just make up harassment claims. The intense scrutiny that follows is de-humanizing and you run the very real risk of retaliation.

I suspect the working conditions at NoR are not going to improve. The hostility will just become more subtle. Maybe fewer female employees will be hired. Maybe those that spoke out or are suspected of speaking out will stop receiving merit raises. Maybe they'll be turned down each time they apply for a new position in an effort to make them quit.

Regardless of whether or not you believe the harassment claims, the way Yasha conducted himself while representing Nintendo was absolutely unacceptable. Any employee with a lesser status would have been let go.

@Mogster @wolfgabe

This is exactly what they would do. There would have been people close enough to him to be able to temporarily hold the role while a replacement is found, or someone who would have been next in line (so to speak)

Every business can identify talent within and it wouldn't surprise me if people would have been earmarked as potential or someone externally marked as an ideal replacement.

Either way, they can sack him on the spot and be in a good enough position to get someone promoted within or keep the seat warm while the recruitment process takes place.

@Xploder9825 Get that logic outta here

@KainXavier The thing is though its kinda important to take any claims of harassment with a hint of salt considering how I have heard about women making false claims of sexual misconduct. There is the making the accusation then there is actually proving it

We do not know if the abuse claims are true or not. Of course people will try such claims in conjunction with an outrage like that in order to make the claim appear more believable.

@Wolfgabe @MiniSara

I disagree given what I know about sexual assault. The vast majority of sexual assault claims are legitimate. (See here: https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf.) I don't think it's a stretch to assume the same is true when it comes to harassment.

And again, even if you don't believe Yasha sexually harassed his employees, he conducted himself in a completely unprofessional manner while representing Nintendo. He should have been fired. Nintendo employees have been fired for a lot less. See Alison Rapp and Chris Pranger.

Edit:

Lastly, it's very hard to actually prove a harassment claim. If there is no physical evidence, all you have is one person's word against the other's. What you should do is look for patterns of abuse. Have multiple people come forward with claims regarding this employee? Yes. Does this employee exhibit other problematic behavior? Yes. Can this person use their position as leverage against their accusers? Yes. That's far too many yesses for my comfort.

Compare how polished and professional ANYTHING Nintendo of America or Europe does either live or recorded over the last 30 years to THIS!!! The fact this happened on an OFFICIAL Nintendo stream is absolutely reprehensible and unforgivable honestly. If Mr. Yamauchi was still alive this clown shoes would've been fired on the spot!!

Booooo! I’ve searched this man’s soul, and he’s pure EGO!

@Xploder9825: “I think Nintendo's decision is what it is...” Eloquently put; just one (main) question: what is it, then?

@Xploder6825: Ha, fair enough! It was an accurate analysis, and while I think he should’ve gotten the axe, we have only been permitted one side of the story. Now...if he’s released in the next...ever, all us no-nothing outsiders will be proven correct! Tough position for everyone involved (relying on his indefinite good behavior, that is).