Man...this is some messed up stuff. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4) will be the final game I spend money on from Konami. I just can't support a company that treats their employees in such Orwellian/Big Brother methods of control. I am glad that Kojima is now free of that toxic mess that was Konami and is able to go out and do his own thing, without having someone try to control everything he and his team (old Kojima Productions unit) does.

Pirating the game is only an option if you're a douche bag.

Kojima has been trying to warn us about his employer this whole time!

This article feels a bit strange / white-knightey.

1) If Konami's corporate culture is actually terrible, then it will produce poor results. Konami is already getting out of games, although we don't know how much of that might've stemmed from poor culture.

2) If Konami's employees are unhappy, they are free to leave, see 1).

3) If there aren't enough other game development jobs at other companies to suit those unhappy employees, then they're in the same boat as every other prospective game developer in the world.

It seems to me there shouldn't be any special consumer action here. If you want to buy MGS5, buy it. If Konami has awful corporate practices, then they'll suffer for it either way. Their employees are adults capable of making their own decisions. They don't seem to be to be at an unfair disadvantage, so they don't need your help.

Right now I take this all with a grain of salt. Who is providing this inside information on the company? If its true then I guess the employment of engineers in Japan must be pretty tough that no one just leaves on their own but stays and puts up with this. If the company wants to act this way thats fine, you don't have to work there.

Are these stories one time or is this systematic behavior? Also I doubt they do this to a lot of people because you can't afford to keep bringing in new people. You constantly training and restarting work. Is this just a group of pissed off employees who taking advantage of Konami's taking a black eye because they are dumping their game work? So they are hitting back?

I don't have any problem with taking action on employees who shit on their employer on social media, yup freedom of speech...but your speech has consequences, no one has to sit their and take getting dumped on.

Medal Gear 4 sold 4.3 million copies cost was about 67M (from Forbes). Games before that sold less. 80M is a hell of lot of money they spent on this game, maybe thats why someone in management panicked and was trying to save their ass because of the overruns by instituting these awful work environments. To break even thats going to be around 2M copies of the game sold WW (I am guess based on what I have read)? If you are the guy who let Kojima spend all of that money you may panic a bit.

By the way these environments are not unique to Japan. Go work in a classified lab. The cameras, knowing where you are by your id tag (even when you come in thru the gate in the morning), take away getting sent out to work in the gym for screwups (they don't do that, yet) and add that they monitor your calls and no cell phones allowed (even in the building) and monthly urine tests. By the way they also monitor what happens in your private life.

By the way...if you don't like something you love is being developed in a harsh environment then you really need to think about buying cell phones, your consoles and tablets...foxcon is a friggin prison. Those poor souls are the ones you really should be feeling for. Everything from Apple to Nintendo comes out of those gates of hell.

What an awful company. Thank goodness Kojima productions is no longer under them. Looking forward to the festering of the corpse of Konami under this awful new ceo and hope the remaining developers can find better jobs.

Jesus... What a soul-crushing existence. Also. As I was reading this I came to the conclusion that Austin is REALLY fucking smart. God damn. Like, I tend to think of myself as pretty sharp, but really. Austin. Damn, dude.

@austin_walker

Thanks for your thoughts on this, I saw this posted elsewhere and I wish I could say I was surprised.

My one question is, is this working environment at Konami a relatively recent development driven by poor leadership ? Or is this the way it's always been since the NES days?

It's hard to imagine people like Kojima et al. willingly slaving away for decades under this kind of scrutiny and it's even harder to imagine that the Western World would only finally out about this now.

Eww. The existence of abuse and employee mistreatment at a company is bad in itself--like Austin said, it's dehumanizing, the worst thing anything can be. A system built to make a person into less of a person is an evil system. So, no, there is no hand waving this away. White-knight is a term used to attack those willing to say, "hey, this is screwed up." It, like Konami's practices, exists to silence dissent and thoughtfulness. It's a bullshit term.

Just as bullshit as saying, "hey, if you hate this, hate Foxconn." Pointing out hypocrisy is easy, and it often muddies the waters to where pointing out that something harmful is happening doesn't matter because, dude, what about the Congo? It's a bullshit approach that focuses on logical consistency over human suffering.

If humans are suffering and being treated as less than human, that's bad and a consumer should think about if not do something about it. That's it. There is no alternative. You've read about this. Now you choose how to act. Stop trying to find a way this is okay or misunderstood. You're avoiding the personal pain of knowing you've given money or support to a company with unethical, inhumane practices. Deal with that feeling and do something about it.

That's the only choice here.

Man Konami IS pretty messed up. Even though I didn't think it would be as surprising, it still is.

Although it's strange this showed up now... And seems a bit drastic and one sided. Maybe someone finally had enough? Could have happened earlier. Could also be employees soured after Konami turned away from games...

I wonder how this generally compares to other employers in Japan.

Also, every new restrictive law is Orwellian, not just the ones you disagree with.

Man, I thought we had it bad at my job... Not the actual work, but downsizing and restructuring left and right. I'd probably get sacked too for posting this.

NO PLACE FOR HIDEO!

Seriously, they need to GTFO of that cesspit of a company and make awesome games somewhere else.

I see nothing problematic with what Konami does, especially when compared with other companies (remember Capcom overworking Ono almost up to his death?), it's a cultural choice of the company. Video surveillance in the workplace is widely used in some countries and I find any Panopticon and Orwell analogies to be completely off-base as Konami workers are always free to leave and not be watched anymore.

You mean the company that wouldn't let the guys shoot in front of the empty Konami both (in a public place no less) and the the company that flags nearly every Let's Play and trailer on YouTube are complete asshats? Weird.

Is it bad that the guy left of Kojima in that picture just looks like Yoshinori Ono to me?

Stuff like that and the lore behind the Assassin's Creed games is fascinating. As in, if there were an Abstergo industries, Ubisoft seems more likely to be part of that conglomerate than being opposed to it. It's almost as if they don't care what goes into the fiction, just as long as people buy it.

Which, to be fair, even after hearing all this, I'm likely going to pick up Metal Gear Solid V at some point. /part of the problem

Awesome report Austin!

Did you seriously spend a third of the article counter-arguing a Panopticon over Kotaku's Orwell allusion?

That's so cool.

Solid and Liquid wrestling on the floor in tight leather hot pants and ... Oh god, what am I doing heeeeerreeeee? xD

While Konami is certainly taking it to an extreme and is burning down virtually every bridge they had ever built with the non-mobile gaming community in the process, their actions don't feel entirely out of line with standard Japanese corporate culture. In many Japanese companies, older and well-respected employees who either just aren't needed anymore or simply can't do their job as well as they used to are rarely outright fired and, instead, they are moved to trivial and/or uncomfortable assignments as a way of forcibly encouraging them to retire or resign on their own.

However, in this case, the older, well-respected 'employee' at Konami is their non-mobile video game division. Creating an absurdly harsh and stressful work environment is a pretty good way to make a whole bunch of people jump ship as soon as they can and the budget for MGS5 is high enough that, while they will likely still make a profit off of it, it wouldn't be too surprising if they later complained about even Metal Gear being 'barely profitable' and used it as an excuse to completely shut down their console gaming division at an even faster rate than they're already moving.

Konami wants to get out of the console gaming industry and they're doing it in the quickest, most ungraceful way they can because they know that their actions here will have little to no impact on their other ventures.

@avanzato: I agree to a point, but ultimately unionisation is solely up to the workers. As consumers all the power we have is our money and where we choose to spend it. If you think something is bad it is a reasonable action to boycott something. I don't think it makes a massive difference, but financially supporting a group/organisation/whatever that you think is acting immorally is a bad idea generally.

Not that I really expect people to boycott Konami here, people just want fun games and most don't want real world concerns interfering with their pass time.

I agree. I'm not conflicted about buying the game. Konami have most likely already made up their minds what's going to happen once MGS V launches, regardless of how well it sells or not. More than likely, this is the last big budget game they make. Everything else from here on out is Pro Evo and mobile games. They'll gut their development teams down to what they need and put the rest into jobs as cleaners or doormen. There's nothing you can do about it.

I hope for anyone whose working at Konami to get out of there, but unfortunately it seems like Japan is still stuck in the mindset of the first company you work for is the last company you work for.

The joke about IGA being stuck in some janitorial role at Konami before he quit the company may have held some truth afterall.

making a five second post about opinions i already had isn't really caring

@punched: I only mentioned it because used isn't an option for PC players but then I don't play on PC so I don't know what a better equivalent would be...steam sale would probably be a better equivalent.

You have a point all though it's arguable if the lower level employees at Kojipro would care much about criticism. The person who benefits most from critique is Kojima who suffers least in these conditions and will land on his feet 100% in comparison to low level employees. This is also a team that Kojima has effortless thrown under the bus over the rising fiasco. While I'm personally planning to buy new for similar reasons you state not everyone will value the game above the conditions nor should they feel the need to.

Also these conditions will only be a meager paragraph in a review at most so I doubt that these issues will actually affect discussion in any meaningful way about the game considering how easy to forget the gaming public is. Just the recent moving up of the PC release erased a large amount of disdain.

There's a lot of stuff in there which sounds extreme but is actually very standard for a lot of this kind of media position. I can only speak for VFX, but these are all industry standard now:

• No internet access: (This was actually imposed by Disney/Marvel in my industry, and since they dominate everything now it's kind of extended to and studio that wants to get their work. This is for security, not only because of what you can download and upload, but because it exposes your network to outsiders. There's a reason people use airgapped computers when handling sensitive documents, so for a multi-million dollar industry like this it's no surprise that they value their privacy. In the few studios that do allow internet access it's heavily monitored.
• No personal email: See above. I've worked places where you'll be given an email client that can only send and receive emails from other computers on the network. Again, this is now standard.
• Being late is a breach of your contract and the company is legally justified in keeping tabs on that. It's a little extreme but a lot of places will monitor when you swipe in and out of the building.
• You can, and will, be fired if you're caught talking about your current project outside of the office. Those NDA's are serious business.

This re-assigned shit is what blows my mind a little bit. I don't know why experienced developers are putting up with that at all, unless they signed themselves up for a completely ridiculous contract where they aren't allowed to leave, in which case what the fuck? I also don't really understand how Konami can afford to effectively blacklist experienced artists by moving them to janitorial positions. Who is allowing themselves to be subjected to that and why?

I'm playing devils advocate here, I know plenty of people who would rather take a runner/intern position than face a lengthy chunk of unemployment, so there's a chance that "people are being reassigned" has been given a somewhat negative spin, and actually they are keeping people employed in temporary positions so they can keep them on the payroll? The way it's phrased here does make it sound extremely malicious, though...

Similarly, the verbal bullying. That's fucked up, and I don't know how that's being allowed to happen.

Thank you Austin.

If they really were just "being a Japanese company," the Nikkei, a Japanese publication, would have no reason to report on it. Clearly, this is outside the norm.

@nerolus:

10000000000000000000%. Also, the whole 'if they don't like it, why don't they leave!' argument is pervading a lot of recent discussions regarding working conditions in almost every sector - from menial, low-paid work to the type of stuff we're seeing here. Are people really that blind that they can't see that it's simply not as easy for the vast, VAST majority of people to just go find another job?! Do you not think literally EVERYONE would have done that if that weren't the case? It's the nature of capitalism - you need the people working the shitty, low-paid jobs in order for the rich and powerful to have a gauge by which to measure said wealth and power. Can we all agree never to bring up the whole leaving-a-job-because-someone-doesn't-like-it thing again now? Can we see that it's simply not a factor in the reality we live in?

wow... now Im conflicted... as much as i was going to buy MGS5, Konami is terrible to their employees. I could say i'd get it to support the guys at the former Kojima Productions, I really don't know. either way whether i decide to buy it or not, this would be the last game i get from Konami, at least until they get their act together which, considering the general work attitude of the majority of Japanese work execs, is unlikely for quite a few years.

Man Konami has gone off the rails in even more ways then I'd ever thought. Corporations like this always suck, no matter what buisness they are in, but this seems especially dumb considering all the money those devs brought into the Corp. in the past.

Also I don't see buying MGSV or any other Konami game as good or bad for whatever is going on in their corporate structure. Even talking about this is a bit pointless in my opinion since it would eventually just devolve into a weird discussion about consumer morals, without anyone ever being able to really know the "consequences" of buying/not buying a Konami game.

While you're not wrong, this comment and others like it aren't taking into consideration the economics and socio-economics of the situation and cultural Japan as a whole. There's a lot more to it than just "go find a new job if you don't like it".

Feeling really guilty about supporting a company that does this.

I think the best people that can probably talk about this is the guys from 8-4 Play. Really interested on their take on this.

#FuckKonami

This has more to do with Japanese employment laws. Basically, you can't legally fire an employee unless you can painstakingly prove they are actively detrimental to your business, and even then it's a lengthy process. To get around this, employers will put employees in shitty positions to coerce them to quit of their own accord.

This aspect isn't unique to Konami at all, but it's still a shitty thing that happens.

so, basically everything that anonymous source leaked to Super Bunnyhop was spot on.

this was a great article, and that...apt reference sent chills up my spine.

@gaspower: I was just about to say that too. If anything, they'll probably have a better idea of the cultural aspects of this story that the majority of us don't really have any good introspective on.

Man, this is all a real shit show. I think I might make a point to play MGS5 used. I'm sure Kojima and Crew would want people to enjoy it, but I don't want to give Konami my money anymore.

Even without taking that into account, that seems like a very unsavoury and unhealthy working environment, that one should only subject to if it had to financially.

Those working conditions sound terrible and it's a real shame that Konami's management is burning the game departments so completely.

I'd like to join the choir of people applauding the Foucault reference! @austin_walker killing it as usual!

You are the king of news man! King Austin Walker of House Walker, LONG MAY HE REIGN!

Wow this is madness! Not sure how efficient and productive it is, to re-assign developers to another role they have no training in.

Wow this is just mind blowing conditions like that could exist for so long without it getting out.

So what are the odds Kojima's falling out started with Konami corporate trying to bust him down to pachinco duty?

Fuck. Well, fuck...

Can't say this changes my mind about buying MGSV, but man. I'm real glad Konami does nothing other than MGS that I give a shit about, so that I can officially stop supporting them after this last game.

Like, fuck... What the Hell, Konami?

@iamjohn: love Austin as a new member of the team. His work pushed me over the edge to join.