The Game Awards Opened By Slamming Konami For How They Treated Hideo Kojima

Geoff Keighley last year was determined not to let Konami off the hook for not allowing Kojima to attend The Game Awards, and when the show opened earlier today he made sure to give Konami an even bigger serve.

“I think what happened to Hideo Kojima last year was a tragedy, but he never complained: he just sat in an isolated room for months, looked inside himself and focused on his art.” Keighley opened the show by saying.

The remark was a reference to a new interview with Glixel, where Keighley revealed that the breakdown between Konami and the legendary director was so severe that Konami kept Kojima on a separate floor, in a separate room, for the last six months of development on Metal Gear Solid 5.

“The fact that he finished that game under those circumstances is just amazing,” Keighley said. “He was locked in a separate room on a different floor than his development team for the final six months of development. He couldn’t even talk to them – he had to talk through someone else. That’s how [Metal Gear Solid 5] was finished.”

On stage, Keighley reiterated that he’d also spent a great deal of time just trying to give Kojima last year’s award for Metal Gear Solid 5, which Kiefer Sutherland accepted on behalf of the developers at the time. “For most of the past year, I’ve tried very unsuccessfully to give Hideo the award he rightly won last year for Metal Gear Solid 5. I soon found out why: he is such a principled person, eventually word came back to me that, ‘Geoff, I can’t have that blood on my hands.’”

Kojima then took the stage, saying that at one point he thought he had “lost everything”. “But I didn’t lose anything thanks to all of you,” after which point he cheekily showed off his “early gift” for all – a new Death Stranding trailer.

Which, unexpectedly, was fucking boss.


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