Hideo Kojima left Konami earlier this month – report

UPDATE 20/10/2015: Konami has issued a statement to Tokyo Sports (translated by Kotaku), denying Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima has left the company.

“Currently, Kojima is a listed as a company employee [at Konami],” a Konami spokesperson said.

“Currently, Kojima and the development team are finished developing Metal Gear Solid 5 and are taking a long time off from work.”

Yesterday, a report in The New Yorker discussed Kojima’s farewell party. “We’re not sure what kind of thing this was,” the Konami spokesperson said when asked about it.

“Because the development time for console games is so long and fatigues builds up, it’s common for employees to take extended periods of time of when development is finished.”

It sounds like Konami is a little confused about the status of its superstar designer.

Simon Parkin, author of the New Yorker article, took to Twitter to help Konami out.

Here is a photograph of Kojima’s farewell party on October 9th at Konami, which Konami claims no knowledge of: pic.twitter.com/xgRUoYs5qt

— Simon Parkin (@SimonParkin) October 20, 2015

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ORIGINAL STORY 19/10/2015: Hideo Kojima’s last day working for Konami was 9th October, according to a report from the New Yorker.

We’ve known Kojima’s relationship with Konami has been strained for a while now, as the publisher removed the director’s name from all marketing around Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and took the developer off the board of directors back in March. It’s since shuttered his studio, Kojima Productions, resulting in a game that felt blatantly unfinished at times.

Konami also cancelled Kojima’s Silent Hills project he was collaborating with Guillermo Del Toro and Norman Reedus on.

Initial reports claimed Kojima would remain with Konami until his contract expired at the end of the year, but it sounds as if either he or Konami couldn’t wait that long, or perhaps the earlier report was off by a few months.