Kadokawa, the parent company of Elden Ring and Dark Souls developer FromSoftware, is reportedly under fire for failing to capitalise on the success of its hugely-successful fantasy games.

Coming just weeks after Elden Ring and Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki pushed back against investor calls to create quicker, safer sequels, an activist shareholder is reportedly aiming to push out Kadokawa’s CEO to instil greater control over FromSoftware.

According to Reuters, an annual meeting will be held in an attempt to push out CEO Takeshi Natsuno. The CEO will be facing off against Oasis Management, an activist investor group that serves as Kadokawa’s largest shareholder with a 13.76% stake in the company.

The push to supplant Natsuno comes due to FromSoftware’s long-term relationship with Bandai Namco, the publisher behind Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Armored Core and other titles. Oasis deems the loss of profits from the developer-publisher relationship to have caused “material profit leakage”, and other investors are backing the claim.

Alongisde the “profit leakage” from FromSoftware’s games, which are the biggest successes of Kadokawa, investors are also targeting a lower-than-expected annual operating profit.

Additionally, the company has been hit with a number of controversies, including the conviction of former chairman Tsuguhiko Kadokawa for “Olympics-relating corruption”. The former chairman is planning to sue CEO Takeshi Natsuno for releasing a report which affected his court case.

All of this means that Kadokawa’s CEO could indeed be replaced. This would likely result in an axing of FromSoftware’s decades-long partnership with Bandai Namco as well as result in a faster output of content from the studio. Although, it would likely result in less original IPs and less experimental launches.

Of course, alongside a new release of Elden Ring in the form of its Tarnished Edition later this year, FromSoftware is also working on the Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive game The Duskbloods. Both titles are set to release this year with a closed network test for the latter launching in the coming months.

It’s unknown what effects this will have on the future of FromSoftware, although it does seem clear that we will see more Elden Ring titles if the investors have their way. Whether or not that’s what FromSoftware wants, however, is unknown.