Game Freak and Creatures made Pokémon and still own part of the company that runs it, but owning it is not how they earn. Each has published accounts exactly once that we can find, and in both years the profit was far more than plain fees for the work would explain: 3.3× the most we think fees could leave at Game Freak, and 3.7× at Creatures. Dividends from The Pokémon Company account for at most 0.6% and 7.1% of the profit the two had kept. So they are paid as suppliers, most likely by something that rises with sales, on terms that have never been made public.
Each is known to have shown its accounts once, on the day of a merger notice
Game Freak makes the main Pokémon games and Creatures looks after the card game. With Nintendo they founded The Pokémon Company in 1998. Both are private, and Japanese law asks every company to publish a balance-sheet notice each year.
The only Game Freak notice we have found ran in the official gazette on 27 October 2015, the day it gave notice of absorbing a sister studio, Core Games, 35 days before the merger took effect. The only Creatures notice we have found is dated 16 October 2020, the gazette day of its notice of absorbing Ambrella, 45 days ahead of that merger. The timing follows from company law, under which a company absorbing another must print or cite its latest balance sheet in the merger notice.
In the 15 other company-years that the gazette indexes cover in full, the years to March 2018 through March 2025, neither company published anything; the years to March 2016 and 2017 are not indexed. The same indexes show a notice from The Pokémon Company and from its Pokémon Center subsidiary in every one of those years. Fig. 1 sets out what is known of the two founders’ profit, one year each and five years apart.
Each founder’s profit has surfaced once, both times alongside a merger notice
Net profit, ¥ billion, years to March. Game Freak 2015, Creatures 2020. Dashed lines mark the two merger notices. In 15 other company-years checked in full, nothing was published.
- Game Freak, net profit
- Creatures, net profit
Show the numbers
| Year to March | Game Freak, net profit, ¥bn | Creatures, net profit, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | – | ||
| 2016 | – | – | |
| 2017 | – | – | |
| 2018 | – | – | |
| 2019 | – | – | |
| 2020 | – | ||
| 2021 | – | – | |
| 2022 | – | – | |
| 2023 | – | – | |
| 2024 | – | – | |
| 2025 | – | – | |
| 2026 | – | – |
Game Freak, net profit. Year to March 2015, printed in the official gazette on 27 October 2015, the day Game Freak gave notice of absorbing Core Games. No other year has been found.
Creatures, net profit. Year to March 2020, published on 16 October 2020, the gazette day of its notice of absorbing Ambrella. In the 15 other company-years that the gazette indexes cover in full, neither company published anything.
Each profit is more than three times what fees for the work would leave
Game Freak earned ¥1.6bn in the year to March 2015. That was 80% of what The Pokémon Company’s Tokyo company earned in its own year, from a studio of 81 people. Creatures earned ¥3.9bn in the year to March 2020, about a quarter of the Tokyo company’s profit that year.
A studio hired at cost plus a margin cannot reach those figures. We priced the richest such contract we could defend, taking the top of a plausible range of cost for each member of staff, doubled for overheads, with a wide margin on top, then tax. That leaves Game Freak ≈¥0.5bn and Creatures ≈¥1.0bn. The reported profits are 3.3 and 3.7 times those ceilings, and Creatures’ own staff chart suggests it had fewer people in 2020 than we assumed, which widens its gap. Fig. 2 puts each reported profit beside its ceiling.
Each founder earned more than three times the most that fees for its work could explain
Net profit reported against the highest profit a cost-plus contract would leave, ¥ billion. Game Freak, year to March 2015; Creatures, year to March 2020. The ceiling is our estimate.
- Net profit reported
- Most that cost-plus fees would leave (our estimate)
Show the numbers
| Company and year to March | Net profit reported, ¥bn | Most that cost-plus fees would leave (our estimate), ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Game Freak, 2015 | |||
| Creatures, 2020 |
Net profit reported. From each company’s one balance-sheet notice in the official gazette.
Most that cost-plus fees would leave (our estimate). Our estimate of the richest fee-for-work contract: staff cost of ¥15m a head, doubled for overheads, a 30% margin on top, taxed at 31%. Game Freak on 81 staff; Creatures on 168, an interpolation that the company’s own staff chart suggests is too high.
Their shareholding explains almost none of what they had kept
The other candidate is the dividend. The Pokémon Company had distributed ¥84m in total by February 2017 and ¥3.1bn by March 2020 (its payout record is on The Pokémon Company). Credit each founder with the whole of the stake that Nintendo does not own, which overstates both, and Game Freak could have received ¥57m of its ¥10.0bn of retained profit, and Creatures ¥2.1bn of its ¥29.3bn. The profit Creatures reported for 2020 contains no dividend from The Pokémon Company at all.
So at least 93% of what Creatures had accumulated in a quarter of a century, and 99% of what Game Freak had, came from something other than those dividends. Fig. 3 shows the two piles and the most that dividends could have added to each.
Dividends from The Pokémon Company explain at most 7% of Creatures’ retained profit and under 1% of Game Freak’s
Profit each founder had kept since it was founded, against the most it could have received in dividends from The Pokémon Company by the same date, ¥ billion.
- Profit kept since founding (retained earnings)
- Most it could have received in dividends from The Pokémon Company
Show the numbers
| Company and balance-sheet date | Profit kept since founding (retained earnings), ¥bn | Most it could have received in dividends from The Pokémon Company, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Game Freak, March 2015 | |||
| Creatures, March 2020 |
Profit kept since founding (retained earnings). From each company’s one balance-sheet notice.
Most it could have received in dividends from The Pokémon Company. Everything The Pokémon Company had paid out by that date, with this founder alone credited with all of the 68% that Nintendo does not hold. An upper limit; an even split between the two founders would halve it.
The Pokémon Company’s costs have grown with its sales and left the studios’ headcount behind
If The Pokémon Company pays the founders, the likeliest place is its cost of sales. That line rose from ¥64.2bn in the year to February 2021 to ¥301.5bn in the year to February 2026, a rise of 4.7 times. Over the same years the two founders’ combined staff went from 307 to 538–571, less than double. A fee scaled to headcount could account for only 3.1–9.4% of the line in the year to February 2024.
The line follows volume. Before Pocket it came to ¥11.67–12.21 for every card produced, three years running, and a fixed sum plus 42% of sales fits the same years as closely. A summary account cannot separate the printer’s bill from a royalty charged at a constant rate, so the accounts allow a payment tied to sales without showing one.
The founders’ own figures set an outer limit for one year. If all of Creatures’ 2020 profit had been its share of a royalty divided by shareholding, the whole royalty would have been about ¥16.4bn, roughly three-quarters of the Tokyo company’s pre-tax profit that year. That ceiling is built from the Creatures profit in Fig. 2, so it limits the size of a royalty without adding evidence that one exists, and it says nothing about any later year. Fig. 4 compares the cost line with the studios’ headcount.
The Pokémon Company’s cost of sales rose 4.7-fold while Game Freak and Creatures staff less than doubled
Cost of sales of the Tokyo company and the combined staff of the two founders, each as an index, year to February 2021 = 100.
- The Pokémon Company’s cost of sales
- Game Freak and Creatures staff, combined
- Estimate
Show the numbers
| Year to February | The Pokémon Company’s cost of sales, index | Game Freak and Creatures staff, combined, index | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | |||
| 2022 | |||
| 2023 | |||
| 2024 | |||
| 2025 | |||
| 2026 | (175–186) |
The Pokémon Company’s cost of sales. Tokyo parent, from its gazette notices: ¥64.2bn in the year to February 2021, ¥301.5bn in the year to February 2026.
Game Freak and Creatures staff, combined. Headcounts from the two companies’ own pages, 307 people at the start; some years are interpolated, and the latest is a range of 538 to 571.
The two founders do different work, and only Creatures is on Pocket
Game Freak builds the main games. On the Japanese release of Scarlet and Violet, The Pokémon Company is the publisher, Nintendo the seller and Game Freak the maker (see Video games). It had 242 staff in June 2025, three times the 2015 figure and seven fewer than in March.
Creatures has grown from 84 people in 2016 to 296, and it is credited with DeNA as developer of TCG Pocket, which The Pokémon Company sells. In the year Pocket launched, The Pokémon Company’s gross margin fell from 51.2% to 42.7%, a drop of 8.5 points after three years in which it had risen by about a point and a half each year (Pocket’s own course is on Mobile). On our estimate DeNA’s fee and the app stores’ cut explain part of that new cost. If the remainder is Creatures’ share as co-developer, its profit for the year to March 2025 would be 3.6–4.6 times the last figure anyone has seen. Creatures added between 22 and 33 people in each year since 2021, with no jump for Pocket, which is how a share of revenue would look and a fee for extra work would not. The remainder could as easily belong to DeNA or to all three owners. Fig. 5 shows the break in the margin.
The Pokémon Company’s gross margin fell 8.5 points in the year Pocket launched
Gross margin of the Tokyo company, % of sales, years to February 2021 to 2026.
Show the numbers
| Year | Gross margin, Tokyo parent, % of sales | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | ||
| 2022 | ||
| 2023 | ||
| 2024 | ||
| 2025 | ||
| 2026 |
Gross margin, Tokyo parent. Sales less the direct cost of sales, as a share of sales; parent company only. Pocket launched in October 2024, inside the year to February 2025; whether TPC books it gross or net is unconfirmed, so no mechanism is claimed.
What it adds up to
Neither founder is likely to publish accounts again unless a merger forces it. The nearest thing to a clue is The Pokémon Company’s own gross margin, 43.3% last year against 51.2% before TCG Pocket, and its next notice is due around June 2027.