Bandai Namco Entertainment has been investigating a bomb threat after it was called into their US office in Santa Clara, California.
“We can’t provide any comment regarding the validity of the threat as there is an ongoing investigation in progress,” a representative from the company commented. “We can say that all our employees are safe and that we will be doing everything in our power to safeguard the well being of our employees.”
With the threat still under investigation, it’s unknown whether or not it was a hoax or a valid threat. According to IGN, the Santa Clara Police Department had not been altered to the situation by Bandai Namco on Monday night.
Increasing threats against video game companies and doxing of Twitch streamers and journalists is becoming all too common of a news story. The Bandai Namco threat is just one among many threats made to video game companies in the past week alone.
The Bandai Namco bomb threat comes less than a week out from a shooting threat at Twitch’s San Francisco HQ. San Francisco Police Department officer Adam Lobsinger confirmed that the threat was made on Twitter. Twitch employees were told to work from home while the SFPD investigated.
Last week in Tokyo, a man was arrested for threatening to burn Square Enix down. A delivery worker reportedly got so upset over losing in a mobile game that we sent a threat claiming he would recreate the Tokyo animation studio fire from earlier this year. The man later told police that he had no intention of acting on the threats. Square Enix has made no formal comments addressing the situation.
In 2018, a bomb threat at Infinity Ward caused a mass evacuation of all the studios employees. Luckily no one was hurt and no bomb was found, but that doesn’t mean no harm was done. Threats like these make the already stress heavy job of game development even more difficult when developers have to worry about their safety at work and the safety of their families at any given moment.
Source: IGN
