Kadokawas chef håller fast vid att investerare kräver mer från Elden Ring

Kadokawa CEO Takeshi Natsuno has survived a shareholder vote on his future, with an activist investor arguing the company has failed to turn Elden Ring's success into enough profit. Reuters reported the result of the meeting, where Natsuno faced down Hong Kong-based Oasis Management, now Kadokawa's largest shareholder with a 13.76% stake. The win may be short-lived. Automaton reported that Oasis has since raised its holding to 15.25% and plans to push it higher.

Elden Ring comes from FromSoftware, which Kadokawa owns. The game has sold 30 million copies, a number set to climb with the Tarnished Edition launch in August. It arrived in 2022, followed by the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion in 2024 and the multiplayer spinoff Nightreign in 2025. Oasis wants more money out of that run.

The core of the complaint is publishing. FromSoftware self-publishes Elden Ring in Japan, but Bandai Namco handles it internationally, which cuts into Kadokawa's margins. Oasis wants Kadokawa to self-publish everywhere. It also points to Sony's investment in Kadokawa, which bought a 10% stake and produced little visible result.

"FromSoftware is Kadokawa's crown-jewel asset: a globally recognized studio with a loyal international fanbase and a proven ability to create blockbuster titles such as Elden Ring. Yet Kadokawa continues to leave a meaningful share of the economics from these titles with third-party publishing partners, creating a significant and ongoing loss of value for all of Kadokawa's stakeholders."

— Oasis Management

Oasis has said it is not trying to force a sale of FromSoftware, despite years of rumors about various companies wanting to buy the studio. Its position is that FromSoftware should be the central driver of Kadokawa's long-term growth.

"Our point is that FromSoftware must be managed with the ambition, investment, and strategic focus that an asset of its quality deserves. Its employees, creators, and fans deserve ownership and leadership that are fully committed to helping the studio realize its extraordinary global potential."

— Oasis Management

Earlier this month, FromSoftware director Hidetaka Miyazaki addressed the pressure on Kadokawa directly. He told fans the studio can still freely make the kind of games it wants without excessive interference. That reassurance matters because the friction here is financial, not creative, and the two are easy to confuse from the outside.

I run a channel built around open-world games, so I read shareholder filings about FromSoftware the way most people read patch notes, and the publishing split is the detail that actually decides how much of a 30-million-seller reaches the company that owns the studio. I think Oasis has a real point on the economics, but the risk is that pushing global self-publishing onto a studio that has never run worldwide distribution could create the kind of operational strain that quiet creative freedom depends on avoiding.

The release calendar gives Oasis fresh evidence on both sides of its argument. FromSoftware has the Elden Ring new DLC on this August, the Tarnished Pack, launching August 28 for existing players on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, with two new classes, new weapons, additional armor and skins, and customization options for Torrent. It ships alongside Tarnished Edition, the game's Switch 2 debut, which bundles the base game, Shadow of the Erdtree, and the Tarnished Pack content. The studio also has The Duskbloods coming later this year.

The longer-term question is what follows Elden Ring. Fans have asked about a direct sequel. In December 2024, Miyazaki said FromSoftware was not considering Elden Ring 2, while declining to rule it out for the future. An Elden Ring movie is in development regardless.

Read also, Kadokawa listed both The Duskbloods and Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition in its latest financial report as slated for a 2026 Switch 2 release, ending months of silence on both. FromSoftware has shown nothing of The Duskbloods, an eight-player Switch 2 exclusive, beyond a reveal trailer mixing jetpacks, dinosaurs, and creepy moons. Tarnished Edition was originally set for late 2025 but slipped into 2026 after reports it ran poorly on the hardware, with FromSoftware apologizing and committing to performance work before launch.