There have been a lot of rumors circulating about Kojima and Konami since yesterday, when reports of a major reorganization at Konami broke out, shortly followed by a report that Kojima has been relegated to just a contracted employee at Konami, Kojima Productions has been disbanded, that e-mail and communication would be restricted for him internally, and that he would cease to work with the company after The Phantom Pain had shipped.
All of this was accompanied by the removal of most, if not all, Kojima Productions and Hideo Kojima branding from Metal Gear promotional material, as well as Konami putting out a job ad for new developers to assist with the development of future Metal gear games. In other words, it seemed very much like Kojima and Konami had had a pretty terrible falling out.
Which is why this interview with GameSpark comes as a bit of a shock- Konami, it seems, is either downplaying the situation entirely, or the press has been misrepresenting everything since yesterday. I will leave it to you to decide which version of the events is true, but essentially, the press release confirms that Kojima is still working on The Phantom pain, that he is still the director of the Metal Gear series, that Kojima branding has indeed been taken down to centralize Konami branding (apparently), and that his communications are restricted (to provide a ‘better development environment’ apparently). They, however, refused to divulge whether or not there was any truth to him being a contracted employee now.
Personally, I think the entire situation smells a bit fishy.
