Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (Japanese: 龍が如くスタジオ, Hepburn: Ryū ga Gotoku Sutajio) is a video game developer housed within Sega as part of its Sega CS Research and Development No. 1 (セガ 第一CS研究開発部, Sega daiichi shīēsu kenkyū kaihatsubu) division. It is known for developing the games in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, which the studio is named after, since Yakuza 5.
The studio's origins can be traced back to Sega AM11 in 1998, which was renamed to R&D4 or AM4 in 1999. It was headed by Toshihiro Nagoshi who joined Sega AM2 in 1989 and has been credited as the creator of the arcade titles Daytona USA and Virtua Striker. Although Virtua Striker is attributed to another developer, Satoshi Mifune. Nagoshi requested his own development division during the development of Shenmue.
In 2000, AM4 was reestablished as Amusement Vision, where it was best known for Super Monkey Ball and F-Zero GX. Several structural changes occurred in the years that followed. During a reorganization in 2003, the non-sports staff of Smilebit merged with Amusement Vision, and a year later Sega merged with Sammy to form Sega Sammy Holdings. Amusement Vision became New Entertainment R&D Dept. and the first Yakuza game was released. Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan! was the last Yakuza game to be developed under the New Entertainment R&D name.
Since Yakuza 3, they were referred to as Sega's CS1 team, all the way up to Yakuza: Dead Souls. The first game to use the RGG logo was Binary Domain in Japan, released in February 2012. Eventually, the RGG Studio's logo became used consistently and the way they brand themselves and give themselves an identity of their own. The current iteration of the logo was introduced during the announcement of the western release of Yakuza Kiwami 2 in 2018.
According to studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama, the studio is not a company organization but refers to a production team within Sega. Nevertheless, the studio's logo and name have become more recognizable internationally, and the logo has been used consistently.