TL;DR it's owned by the Saudis.

Thanks for sharing this, I genuinely had no idea

No ethical consumption under capitalism, yadda yadda.

There is almost nothing you can buy that doesn't have people like the Saudi Princes involved especially if you are talking about electronics. Though I am glad that people are bringing these kinds of consolidations to light.

I refrained from posting about the Neo Geo AES+ for this very reason, so I'm glad someone wrote a good summary of the problem.

To be clear, I won't ban anyone else from posting or discussing the Neo Geo AES+ here on retro_gaming@lemmy.zip, but the current ownership of SNK really deflates my personal excitement for modern SNK endeavors. I even skipped the latest Fatal Fury due to this despite buying more fighting games than most other gamers -- it is simply too hard ethically to turn the other way to clear human rights violations behind the ownership and the direct government ownership aspect of the investment itself.

While Saudi government ownership is a problem across the entire game industry now (majorly EA, minorly Capcom and Nintendo with minority shares owned), I do think that it is worth reminding people of the human cost behind the white-washing campaign so that, if you're going to buy the Neo Geo AES+, you at least know the very real cost behind the transaction beyond the price point of the device itself. A reminder alone at least means we're keeping the problems in mind when we talk about these devices.