Some uncomfortable news has surfaced from the recent second round of the infamous Tera Leak hack of Game Freak.

Internal documents have begun circulating online detailing internal power struggles within the company tied to Junichi Masuda, who was one of Game Freak’s foremost game directors before stepping down in 2022 to become Chief Creative Fellow at The Pokemon Company.

The documents discuss an “Era of Absolute Dominance” for Masuda, where he handled everything from development planning, personnel decisions, public relations, and game design. He reportedly ran things completely unopposed, which resulted in a major “concentration of power”,  and the emergence of “unnecessary people” and “favoritism”. This led to the company being unable to do “proper game design”, and cumulated in a major argument between Masuda and fellow senior director Shigeru Ohmori during the development of Pokemon X/Y, which led to Masuda no longer being allowed to direct future Pokemon games.

Ohmori would go on to become Masuda’s successor as the main game director of the mainline Pokemon series, but this too apparently did not last. The documents go on to say that Ohmori ” inherited the same structure of power” from Masuda with “no real changes”. Due to concerns that this would lead to a repeat of the situation with Masuda, the documents state that Ohmori is no longer the main director of the division that makes Pokemon games as of 2024.

Internal struggles within Game Freak may potentially explain some of the inconsistent quality recent Pokemon games have been criticized for, such as the bug-ridden state that Pokemon Scarlet And Violet launched in. However, as with all rumors of this nature, we caution readers to take this info with a grain of salt, as the truth of these claims will likely never be confirmed from official sources.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.