Elon Musk can't afford Hideo Kojima's game studio

Hideo Kojima says he has turned down "ridiculously high prices" to buy out Kojima Productions

Kirk McKeand | Nov 4, 2022

Elon Musk can't afford Hideo Kojima's game studio /

Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima won't sell his studio for any amount of money, according to new comments from the Japanese game designer.

Hideo Kojima famously split from publisher Konami back in 2015, just after announcing he was working on a new game in the Silent Hill series.

When that didn't work out, he started up his own independent company, Kojima Productions.

Since then, he's had full creative freedom to work on oddities such as Death Stranding, a sandbox game where you play as a man and a baby in a jar. It's a kind of freedom he won't be giving up any time soon.

Despite there being an onslaught of company mergers in video games over the past few years - the most famous being the ongoing attempted acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft - Kojima has been batting the offers away.

"I created this company in December 2015 after leaving Konami," Kojima said on the latest episode of his podcast. "It was 100 percent out of my pocket - no funding from anyone whatsoever.

"We are indies. We have no affiliations whatsoever and are not backed by anyone, and are on good terms with everybody in the industry.

"Every day I am approached by offers from all over the world to buy our studio. Some of those offers are ridiculously high prices but it's not that I want money. I want to make what I want to make. That's why I created this studio. So as long as I'm alive, I don't think I'll ever accept those offers."

Sorry, Elon.

Kojima and his team are currently at work on a mysterious new game, which has been teased with a series of silhouette images of actors, later revealed to be Shioli Kutsuna and Elle Fanning.

If you're still sad we didn't get Silent Hills, the news that there's a new Deus Ex in the works might make up for it a little bit.

Published Nov 4, 2022

KIRK MCKEAND

Kirk McKeand is the Content Director for GLHF. A games media writer and editor from Lincoln, UK, he won a Games Media Award in 2014 in the Rising Star category. He has also been nominated for two Features Writer awards. He was also recognized in MCV's 30 Under 30 list in 2014. His favorite games are The Witcher 3, The Last of Us Part 2, Dishonored 2, Deus Ex, Bloodborne, Suikoden 2, and Final Fantasy 7. You can buy Kirk McKeand's book, The History of the Stealth Game, in most bookstores in the US and UK. With a foreword written by Arkane's Harvey Smith, The History of the Stealth Game dives deep into the shadows of game development, uncovering the surprising stories behind some of the industry's most formative video games. He has written for IGN, Playboy, Vice, Eurogamer, Edge, Official PlayStation Magazine, Games Master, Official Xbox Magazine, USA Today's ForTheWin, Digital Spy, The Telegraph, International Business Times, and more. Kirk was previously the Editor-in-Chief at TheGamer and Deputy Editor at VG247. These days he works as the Content Director for GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage, serving media partners across the globe. You can check out Kirk McKeand's MuckRack profile for more. Email: kirk.mckeand@glhf.gg