Metal Gear Online studio shuttered; Konami let go more than 20 staff

Metal Gear Online

There’s been a lot made of Konami’s move away from big-budget game development, and my goodness is Metal Gear big. The Phantom Pain had a competitive stealth shooter as a side dish – the most ambitious iteration of Metal Gear Online yet. Though the multiplayer component won’t appear on PC until a patch after Christmas, the LA team responsible for it has already been disassembled.

Rumours of the closure popped up among developers on Twitter yesterday, and now a Eurogamer source confirms that Konami have shuttered the studio, letting go of over 20 staff in the process.

The LA wing of Kojima Productions opened in 2013, first to contribute to the Phantom Pain before turning their attention to Metal Gear Online. It once housed over 50 developers, but numbers had already dropped off earlier this year. In March, as Konami were busy stripping Hideo Kojima’s name from The Phantom Pain’s cover, the studio was renamed rather matter-of-factly as Konami Los Angeles Studio.

The audacious auteur himself is reported to have left the studios that bore his name about a month ago, after a farewell party attended by around 100 guests. But Konami insist that Kojima is on holiday.

How’re you getting on with The Phantom Pain? Large, isn’t it?