The drama and controversy continues for Konami, with reports going viral over their botched attempt to silence a Youtube critic over his review of the rumours surrounding the Konami/Kojima fallout. The company's 'Us Vs. The World' approach (or 'scorched earth' approach as Guillermo Del Toro put it) to pretty much everything at the moment has fans not just confused, but questioning the intentions of the long-standing developer.
Konami has long been considered one of the main video / arcade developers and publishers in gaming, but the continued shake up of the company - from de-listing from the NYSE, to the departure of Hideo Kojima, to the cancellation of the upcoming Silent Hills project with director Del Toro - and their seemingly illogical actions has fans dubious about their future.
The reshaping of Konami as a company moving away from console game development became even clearer with their recent announcement that the company's future focus would be entirely on mobile gaming, not to mention their huge investments into gambling machines and their role in the change of Nevada legislation over the legality of skill based gambling games. All these rumours, actions, and announcements have now reached panic levels among fans over Konami's attempts to remove a Youtube video.
The YouTube video causing controversy is one by George Weidman, the creator and host of the Super Bunnyhop channel, titled “Kojima vs Konami: An Investigation” where he examined the claims of anonymous sources inside the company. The rumours claimed that Konami seemed hell bent on destroying anything related to Kojima’s work and apparently destroying Konami itself.
In response to this video, Konami used YouTube’s copyright claim system to take down Weidman’s video under a spurious copyright claim that the host illegally used footage of the game "Metal Gear Rising: Revengance". In the video, less than 20 seconds of footage is shown as Weidman is talking about the game, which by US law is perfectly legal.
YouTube later dropped the claim from Konami, not because of any legal reason, but because Konami didn’t fill the form out correctly. Weidman’s video is now back up and the strike against his account is gone.
The most obvious point to make at this stage is, despite fans decrying Konami's fall from game-developing-grace, Konami clearly does not want to be an arcade and/or console game developer anymore, or at least, they don't want that to be their main business anymore.
The company has made it clear they are more focused on other industries, such as gambling and mobile gaming, and in light of this, it is fair to consider they may even be looking to do other types of business along the same lines as Bandai Namco Entertainment, for example, licensing their more popular titles (this is not a rumour I've heard, but just my own considerations, as it is a potential explaination for why Konami wanted to remove Kojima's name from titles and their cancellation of the latest Silent Hills game, despite claims they will still release titles for the franchise).
If you want to see what all the fuss was about, you can check out Weidman's video below:
