Square Enix has canceled a series of upcoming Starwing Paradox tournaments, including Tournaments located in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, and Fukuoka for both this weekend and next weekend after the game’s management team received death threats. Square Enix, stated that it was necessary to cancel the tournaments as a precautionary measure, and has apologized to those looking forward to the events.

For those unaware, Starwing Paradox is a mecha arcade game animated by Sunrise (the studio behind Gundam), where two teams (each with eight players) pilot a mech and attack the enemy team base.

The cancellation is most likely due to numerous threats and other violent incidents in Japan. This includes multiple threats to Square Enix earlier this year. One such threat earlier this month was a man who was arrested by Tokyo police after threatening the company with an arson attack; similar to the terrible Kyoto Animation tragedy that killed 35 people when an arsonist set fire to the Kyoto Animation building.

Another example of such an incident was in March when a man was arrested for threatening to kill Square Enix staff because he spent over 200,000 yen ($1,794) trying to get an item in one of their mobile gacha games. The man was later arrested by the Japanese police. Around 30 emails were also sent to Square Enix last September containing the word “kill” in Japanese with no other context.

The company says it has reported the threats and is cooperating fully with police. Authorities are currently investigating if there are connections between this and the other death threats the studio received.

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