Why did Yakuza change its name to Like a Dragon?
Because "Yakuza" was a Western marketing invention, and the series had outgrown it.
In Japan the series has always been Ryū ga Gotoku, a name Nagoshi coined, "Like a Dragon", dragons standing for strength and manliness. English releases renamed it Yakuza in 2006 to sell a crime game to the GTA market. On September 16, 2022, Sega told Kotaku, simply, that "the Yakuza name is no more" for new titles.
THE CHANGE
2020 · 2022The bridge title
The 2020 game carried both names at once: Yakuza: Like a Dragon in the West, Ryū ga Gotoku 7 in Japan. Two years later the bridge was demolished and every new release, Infinite Wealth, Gaiden, Pirate Yakuza, carries the Dragon alone.
Sega's stated reason
Per Sega's own comment to Kotaku, new titles use Like a Dragon branding to "more closely align with the Japanese name" of the series that Japanese players had been buying for seventeen years.
The exceptions
The old name survives where it is itself the artifact: remakes and remasters of the PS2 and PS3 games still carry Yakuza (Kiwami, Kiwami 2, and 2026's Kiwami 3), and Amazon's 2024 television series compromised as Like a Dragon: Yakuza.
