Less than two months before Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is released, it appears Konami is cleaning house. The latest move in distancing itself from Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions is to scrub his and his studio’s name off the box art for the game. This comes just days after the voice actor for Big Boss, Akio Otsuka took to the web to let everyone know the relationship between Kojima and Konami was officially coming to an end.
This is not the first time that the company has made sure people knew it would not be working with the Metal Gear series director in the near future. The firm has actually been systematically removing his name for a number of different projects for the better part of a year. Shortly after the release of the trailer that was meant to herald a new Silent Hill game, P.T. was released, any mention of Kojima being involved was scrubbed.
Not long after that, the game itself was scrubbed and Konami went to great lengths to make sure P.T. was not even available for download. Gamespot reports that placeholder artwork for The Phantom Pain had still been displaying the director’s name, but that is apparently not the case as of this morning.
The real question now is just how damaged the relationship between Kojima and Konami that the company is wiping out all reference to the hand he played in bringing the game to market? Right now it doesn’t appear a reconciliation is coming down the pike.
The Metal Gear Solid 5 release date has been set for September 1 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. The PC version is scheduled to arrive two weeks later.