Tupac's Estate Approved His Stranger Than Heaven Cameo. The Executor Who Signed Off Is Being Sued for Embezzlement

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is putting Tupac Shakur into Stranger Than Heaven, thirty years after his death, dressed in Japanese garb and a bandana. The estate signed off. The catch, as Kotaku has pointed out, is that the executor who signed off — Tom Whalley — is currently being sued by Tupac's sister Sekyiwa Shakur for allegedly embezzling millions from the estate he's supposed to be protecting.

That's the whole controversy in a sentence. The man whose authority makes this cameo legal is the same man whose authority is being challenged in court.

RGG head Masayoshi Yokoyama has been pitching the inclusion as a careful, respectful collaboration. "We wanted to have the family involved in every step along the way to make sure this is respectful to his legacy," he told press, framing the character as an attempt to imagine "who Tupac might be now" rather than a recreation of his past. According to Yokoyama, Snoop Dogg suggested Tupac for the role during early conversations about a character RGG was trying to fill. Game Informer reports Snoop voices a character named Orpheus in the game, though that detail hasn't been corroborated elsewhere yet.

The creative work itself seems to have been done the long way around. Kotaku reports RGG built the character from archival footage and photographs — no AI generation involved, which is at least one fewer fire to put out in 2026. The studio is also digitally resurrecting Japanese actor Bunta Sugawara, who died in 2014, so the posthumous casting isn't a one-off stunt. It's a creative direction.

The problem is the paperwork. Whalley's approval is legally sufficient right now because he is, right now, the executor. But Sekyiwa Shakur's lawsuit — still ongoing as of 2026 per Kotaku — alleges he's been enriching himself at the estate's expense. Whalley also previously greenlit Tupac NFTs, which tells you roughly where his instincts sit on the "protect the legacy" versus "monetize the legacy" spectrum. If the court eventually rules against him, every deal he authorized doesn't automatically unwind, but the moral weight of "the family approved this" gets a lot lighter when one branch of the family is in court arguing the approver shouldn't be approving anything.

That's the gap nobody from RGG or Sega has addressed. Yokoyama keeps saying "the family." Public reporting has Sekyiwa Shakur suing the executor. Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mother and the previous steward of the estate, died in 2016. So when the studio says the family was involved "every step of the way," the obvious follow-up — which family members, and whether that includes the sister currently in litigation — hasn't been answered on the record.

The broader question is one the industry keeps dodging. Posthumous digital appearances are becoming routine — Bunta Sugawara in this same game, decades of CGI cameos in film. The legal mechanism is always the same: whoever holds the rights at the moment of the deal can sell them. Whether that person should be selling them is a separate conversation, and it's the one studios never want to have.

Stranger Than Heaven is scheduled for early 2027 , assuming nothing slips. Tupac will be in it. Whether his sister thinks that's okay is, apparently, not RGG's problem to solve.