Metal Gear designer Hideo Kojima was apparently not allowed to attend tonight’s Game Awards, per an announcement by host Geoff Keighley. A lawyer for Konami reportedly barred Kojima from attending, nor accept his awards. The Phantom Pain’s Kiefer Sutherland accepted one of Metal Gear’s awards on his behalf. When the news was revealed, the audience boo’d in protest.
@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN congrats, we miss you my friend!
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) December 4, 2015
Previous reports suggested Kojima had a non-compete through December, which may explain why Kojima was unable to show up to The Game Awards.
As Brian Ashcraft wrote about last night, a PR person at Konami accepted an award for The Phantom Pain at Sony’s PlayStation Awards in Japan last night.
Update: A video cutaway of the quote above has been added above.
Comments
35 responses to “Geoff Keighley: Konami Barred Hideo Kojima From Accepting Metal Gear Award”
#FucKonami
What the hell is wrong with Konami? Do they just want to see how much hate they can possibly garner? I used to love the games they made (I have the Konami logo tune burnt into my brain from one of my all time favourites – the SNES version of Prince of Persia). What the hell happened to them? How have they managed to lose their way so disastrously?
I know, right??
Remember in those glorious 16-bit days, when Konami was up there with Capcom, Square and Nintendo as one of the big greats?
Makes me sad. 🙁
They just don’t care.
Really unprofessional of Geoff to do this. If I fired my best salesperson for stupid reasons and barred him from accepting his salesman of the year award then I wouldn’t want the host of the awards show to verbally attack me.
It may be unproffessional, but it also shows that he cares about his friendship with Kojima, and respecting a developer and artists work far more than business, which is something that Konami clearly needs to learn a bit about.
To follow your analogy, I’d say tough shit. If you fired someone for ‘stupid reasons’ and then stop them from moving on, I’d say you deserve all the shit you get thrown at you.
Realistically Geoff was just voicing the facts followed by his own personal opinion on it, which seems fair enough. I’m not even a fan of Kojima/MGS but the simple fact is, Kojima did the work, he has every right to claim his (teams) award – unless he actually did something completely horrible that deserves Konami removing him from said team.. Except they haven’t indicated that in the slightest because it’s just not the case.
If you fire your best sales person for unfair reasons, or stupid reasons then bar him for accepting an award he’s entitled to, then you SHOULD be called out for your actions.
This is called whistleblowing. You may not WANT someone to verbally attack you but you don’t get the privilidge of saying ‘Hey I’ve acted like a fucktard, RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!’
No, you deserve to be called out in every single way possible for your idiocy.
Otherwise, I’m sure Jayant Patel is sitting somewhere nodding that he agrees with your thoughts…
I agree, but it’s Konami, so I think Geoff gets a free pass on that one.
Why should we care what Konami wants in this case? The award was for Kojima in recognition of his work by his peers and Konami stopped that from happening and basically said to Geoff and company “We don’t give a fuck what you want.” So they got called out on their bullshit and rightly so. The Game Awards don’t answer to Konami and it’s not like Konami is going back there in any capacity in the foreseeable future.
Definitely unprofessional. The classy thing to do would’ve been not call attention to it.
…That said? It was probably the right thing to do, unprofessional or not.
not unprofessional at all, in fact its actually extremely ballsy with Geoff basically daring Konami to Blacklist him
Professional for a journalist, unprofessional for an awards show host. Even if they happen to be the same person, they’re wearing different hats for different roles, and those roles have different standards for what’s considered ‘professional’.
Discretion and respect (even if it’s undeserved) are the professional traits of an awards show. By making that statement, the award being presented to Kojima’s team suddenly became about Konami (the company, not the good people still labouring under its thumb) and Kojima instead of all the people involved who really deserved to be enjoying those accolades.
As an example: it’s unprofessional conduct for a nurse to let someone see their dying girlfriend/boyfriend in the hospital if it goes against the wishes of the immediate family/spouse, but it’s also basic human compassion and the right thing to do. Unprofessional, but moral.
I think this is a troll transient =P don’t feed it
Well… maybe, but I do think he has a point. Professional standards are separate from morality (eg: professional killer/lawyer), and I think a lot of folks confuse the two.
See comment to thyco below
I am not trolling at thanks you very much, unless your talking about @shithead. thing Is almost every award show has or is used as a Platform to callout BS like this though. Jennifer Lawance and many other female actresses have used the Oscars to talk about the wage gap in Hollywood, George Clooney has the done the same to talk about Darfur and Sudan on numerous occasions
Point of clarification: Were JL / Clooney / Etc award hosts, or award recipients? I’d posit that recipients have greater freedom to utilise their acceptance speech – that’s their time. Different standard on the host.
Lol soz thyco yeah I was talking about shithead; wrong reply! =P
What’re Konami going to do? Boycott? Unless they add a pachinko game of the year next year, I think they can take the hit
So basically you are saying that if you act in an unethical and indecent way you still retain the rights to complain if someone acts in an unethical but decent way to expose you?
Yep. Two wrongs don’t make a right. (And anyone has the right to complain, really.)
Just like the Kotaku/Bethesda/Ubi blacklisting. Everyone acting within their rights can still yield a conflicting result.
thats just fucking petty as all hell
Fuck Konami. I’m glad this guy told the truth.
“A lawyer for Konami reportedly barred Kojima from attending, nor accept his awards. ” Eh?
Fuck you, Konami.
This is all really not very nice, is it?
I recon this is all one huge metal gear setup… konami never fired kojima, I think he’s just on holidays, and the company and him are doing all this to setup metal gear solid 5 (Not metal gear solid V)
There are so many huge conspiracy’s going around at the moment!
I can’t wait to see what Boogie’s character Francis is going to do with this story.
Boogie’s reaction was two words: “Fuck Konami”.
If he makes a video about it, who knows. Maybe if you tweet him he’ll answer
What a bizarre scenario. His contract must be something else…
Kinda surprised to see so much hate at Geoff for doing it on here. I personally detest Geoff for unrelated circumstances, but admire him for bringing this shit to light. Konami seems to think that they OWN the people that work for them, their entire lives included. I just think these kind of actions must be like have a bucket of ice cold water thrown on them, like WAKE UP IDIOTS you are digging your own graves here.
All part of the ruse imo.
It’s because he’s on holiday still! right Konami? 😛
SHAMEFUR DISPRAY!!!
The Pox on you Konami.