Fans boo as Konami blocks Kojima attending Game Awards to receive award

 

At The Game Awards last night Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain won an award for best Action/Adventure game.  However, the host of the awards Geoff Keighley stated that industry icon and much loved Hideo Kojima was not allowed to attend the event to pick up the award as he was blocked by Konami due to an “employment contract”.  Instead, the responsibility to collect the award fell to Kiefer Sutherland, who replaced David Hayter as Snake/Boss in The Phantom Pain.

While we do not know for 100% sure, Keighley said that Hideo Kojima “had every intention of being with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami just recently that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight’s award ceremony to accept any awards.”

He went on to say that “He’s under an employment contract and it’s disappointing and it’s inconceivable to me that an artist like Hideo would not be allowed to come here and celebrate with his peers and his fellow teammates,“

You can hear the words from Geoff Keighley (and boo’s) about a minute into the video above following Kiefer Sutherland collecting the award.

As you can imagine, this news was not received well to those in attendance, which lead to crowd boo’s.  If this is in fact true, then it’s just another kick in the teeth by Konami to a man that played a HUGE part in making Konami one of the most successful videogame companies ever.  The whole situation just grows ever more sad, frustrating and quite frankly, needless.