We’ve received several reports that Nippon Ichi Software has come into financial trouble, and are unable to pay their employees. This may have come from Disgaea RPG on smartphones being under permanent maintenance.

The new report (via Otakomu, Gamebiz.jp) claims NIS have been unable to pay its employees and have resorted to a Moving Strike Warrant – also called a MS Warrant. In short, the company sells its stocks for low prices to generate quick cash, but also devalues the stocks investors have already bought.

While we have conflicting reports that recent NIS titles have sold poorly in Japan, we have more concrete evidence that their recent smartphone game Disgaea RPG has certainly been struggling.

Ha-Vi reports that the game was a collaborative project between NIS and Forward Works (a Sony subsidiary). While it launched March 19th 2019, it soon ran into numerous bugs and issues that required long maintenance periods to attempt to solve. In fact, the game has still not come back online since its last bout of maintenance began.

This of course means no one can earn revenue from the game, which means staff cannot be paid, which means maintenance on the game will be delayed and hindered. NIS and Forward Works both issued statements and apologies via Forward Work’s official blog on April 12th 2019.

Since then the official Twitter account for the game has been a constant stream of apologies. Recent tweets have even asked those who bought in-game items while the game was still active to contact them, presumably for a refund.

We’ve reached out to Nippon Ichi Software for a comment.

We will keep you guys posted.