Kojima Productions Logo Removed from MGSV Box Art

Published: July 15, 2015 10:30 AM /

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Metal Gear Solid 5 Cover

Just one more noteworthy moment in Konami's seemingly crumbling relationship with Hideo Kojima, the Japanese gaming company recently removed all branding from the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain  that references Hideo Kojima. This includes "A Hideo Kojima Game" as well as the Kojima Production logo in the bottom left corner.

Konami released an updated cover, without the aforementioned Kojima branding, to which a NeoGAF user spotted the absence of Kojima. Here we see the previous cover with mentions to Kojima:

Metal Gear Solid 5 Before

And here we see the updated box art cover with "A Hideo Kojima Game" and the Kojima Productions logo conspicuously removed:

Metal Gear Solid 5 After

This is just one of many public instance of the companies worsening relationship with the mind behind Metal Gear Solid. On March 19th, 2015, Konami removed all mentions of Kojima from its executive positions as well as the Metal Gear Solid website. Kojima's studio, Kojima Productions, was subsequently renamed Konami Digital Entertainment. Konami has since announced a studio-wide restructuring with aims of centralizing production. Afterwards reports surfaced that Kojima and his senior staff were being demoted to contractors and would leave the company after their contracts expired in December. On April 27th, 2015, Konami confirmed it would cancel Silent Hills, the hotly anticipated full title that the famous P.T. had given horror fans a taste of. P.T. had also been taken off the Playstation Store, before later pulling it off their servers entirely. In fact it was so anticipated that various members of the team, including Norman Reedus, supported a petition to revive it that was started by an army of fans. Konami has claimed that their efforts to remove Kojima's name from branding for the game is part of the company's restructuring effort to put the Konami name front and center, a stance from which they seemingly back peddled after backlash but have apparently gone back to. We'll have to wait and see what new turn of events awaits us on this wild ride to the game's release date.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is currently scheduled to release on September 1st, 2015 for Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox  360, Xbox One. The PC release of the game will follow later on September 15th, 2015.

What is your take on this whole, messy situation? Do you plan to be buying Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on launch day? Or will you be waiting to see what comes next in the popcorn internet drama of a game? Let us know in the comments below! 

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Avid shooter and platformer fan. Coffee is the only power up I need. In the spare time I have I will listen to more podcasts than has scientifically been… More about Bryan