Hideo Kojima speaks out against all-digital future for video games

Hideo Kojima doesn’t trust a digital only future (pic: BAFTA)

If you’re worried about physical copies of video games and other media going the way of the dodo the creator of Metal Gear agrees with you.

Music and books long ago embraced digital distribution and between faster broadband and the pandemic it’s now much more common to watch a movie via streaming than at a cinema or via a DVD, but as convenient as that may be not everyone thinks it’s an unequivocally good idea.

The central problem is that you don’t own anything when you buy something digitally, you’re essentially just renting it – even if it is theoretically forever. But forever can be cut short if a company goes bust, its severs break down, or it loses the licence for a particular game or piece of content.

That’s exactly what Hideo Kojima has been worrying about on Twitter recently, where he said: ‘Eventually, even digital data will no longer be owned by individuals on their own initiative. Whenever there is a major change or accident in the world, in a country, in a government, in an idea, in a trend, access to it may suddenly be cut off.’

‘We will not be able to freely access the movies, books, and music that we have loved. I would be a have-not. That’s what I’m afraid of. This is not greed’, he added.

It’s not clear if anything in particular brought on this concern but Kojima is famously obsessed by movies and the pandemic has certainly sped up the inevitable migration from watching them at theatres and via physical media to just streaming them.

The problem with that is that no one streaming service has every movie and there’s a danger that more obscure ones could become even harder to get hold of if they got out of print on DVD and Blu-ray.

The same is even more true of video games, where format exclusivity and the difficulties of emulation complicate matters even further.

There have always been games that are difficult to get hold of physically but now there’s the extra problem that when servers are switched off many modern video games become instantly unplayable.

More: Games news

This is no old man yelling at clouds situation for Kojima, who famously predicted the modern era of Internet usage, in terms of the increasing inability to tell fact from fake news, in 2001’s Metal Gear Solid 2.

What will be interesting is if any of these concerns about digital content form the basis of a future game, as he still hasn’t announced a new title beyond the upcoming Death Stranding director’s cut.

That may well be the case, as his next game is rumoured to be an Xbox exclusive which will make extensive use of cloud processing, and clearly Kojima is aware of what that means for the game’s longevity.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, and follow us on Twitter.

MORE : Petition to cancel Hideo Kojima and Xbox collab complains of ‘betraying’ fans

MORE : Abandoned developer forced to record video proving he’s not Hideo Kojima

MORE : Xbox Cloud Gaming now available to everyone on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Follow Metro Gaming on Twitter and email us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.