Creapia Director on How M&A Experience Led to Outsourcing Port of Horror Game Cruelty
The interview offers a rare look at how a small developer used corporate M&A logic to structure a publishing deal, rather than the traditional pitch or funding route.
Reporting from 1 sources: Game Spark.
In an interview with Game Spark, Creapia representative director Yu Fujii and CREEK & RIVER Creative Studios' Ryo Kito discussed the development and console port of the splatter horror game Cruelty. Fujii explained that his experience in M&A at a major game company led him to approach a publisher to handle porting, treating it like a business sale. He contacted about 100 companies, with only three proceeding to serious consideration before CREEK & RIVER took on the project.
Yu Fujii, the developer behind the splatter horror game Cruelty, described how his background in mergers and acquisitions at a major game company shaped his approach to bringing the PC title to consoles. In an interview published by Game Spark, Fujii said he contacted roughly 100 game companies in Tokyo about handling the port, framing the arrangement as similar to a business sale. Only 10 responded, and three entered serious talks. CREEK & RIVER Creative Studios eventually took on the port and publishing for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4.
Fujii, who runs Creapia and develops under the name 838sManiacs, said he registered with the career service Famikari while weighing whether to stay in the industry or go independent. An agent from CREEK & RIVER encouraged him to start a business, noting that a major employer would likely object to his making horror games on the side. The console version of Cruelty, which features no direct combat and runs about 60 minutes, is now available for 1,280 yen across platforms.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.