The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US

It was never proven so. Honestly speaking this rumor (from the Western side) is mostly a knee-jerk reaction from Kojima's firing, which lacks substantial evidences. Yes, Konami is well known for its shitty business and toxic inside culture but that can always happen without Yakuza ties. To my knowledge there was no direct evidence demonstrated for any major gaming company being under the heavy Yakuza influence. Partly because it is so sensitive subject and partly because you are misunderstanding Yakuza ties.

You are right that Yakuza does run big corporations, but traditional Yakuza was concentrated on specific industries like construction and gambling. The 1991 Act on Organized Crimes [1] effectively destroyed the lowermost structure of Yakuza groups so they no longer possess an effective means for violence (and any remaining lower structure has been largely outsourced by now). Major groups surviving today are therefore more like investment funds, with the seed money coming from past organized crimes. They do still commit crime (and they still fight wars with rival groups a lot), but their crimes are no longer discernible from other financial crimes. Having a Yakuza tie in terms of funding is not really a surprising matter for that reason. They can't overtake existing enterprises as like they could in the last century.

> no non-shady entities would get into video game arcades because the risk to compete with organised crime isn't worth it.

Do you know that Japanese showbiz has a rather strong Yakuza influence and yet there are many companies not affiliated with Yakuza? Unlike supposed Yakuza connections to gaming companies there is a substantial body of evidences, Yoshimoto Kogyo and Burning Production to name a few (known to be affiliated with Yamaguchi-gumi and Inagawa-kai respectively), and yet their influence falls short of the entire industry.

[1] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9A%B4%E5%8A%9B%E5%9B%A3%E5...

By the way, the same can be said for most Koreans. In fact Koreans don't like Japan so much that there are widespread false beliefs about Japan---say, the social acceptance of the Adult Video industry (which still doesn't exist) or the fabricated reporting of COVID-19 cases (which might or might not have been happened, but if it did happen, was not that excessive as the rumor suggested) or even that there is zero stigma about game centers (there is, but not to the extent you have initially suggested). There are also many true beliefs that I can independently verify from multiple sources, including those about the modern Yakuza. But you seem to believe that the Japanese society is so conglomerated that it can make any such source up to cover its innards and you can only trust insider's accounts (and I do have plenty from my friends in Japan). How am I supposed to rationally continue this discussion given that?