A year and a half after fans were convinced that director Hideo Kojima was involved with Blue Box Studio's survival horror "Abandoned," he finally addressed the never-ending conspiracy theories.

The developer sat down with Geoff Keighley on the latest episode of his podcast Brain Structure, in which he discussed the game rumors (thanks VGC (opens in new tab)). Kojima brought up persistent rumors that he is involved in some way with Abandoned, and fans are convinced that he is secretly lead developer Hasan Kahraman and that the game is actually the new Silent Hill.

"Users keep sending me pictures of this 'Hasan'. He still sends me about 20 pictures a day, collages and deep fake images. It's really annoying," he said. Later in the podcast he said: 'I haven't talked to Hasan and the game hasn't been released yet. But if he releases the game, maybe people will understand.

Kojima also cited the fact that "Metal Gear Solid 5" was initially released under the pseudonym of developer Moby Dick Studios, and said he would not use the same trick twice. When we did Moby Dick, you got to know the whole story, and it was a lot of fun," he said. But I want everyone to know that we will never do the same thing twice."

Blue Box Studios responded to Kojima's statement with a tweet, the first activity from the studio since early April. It said, "I want to thank Hideo Kojima for being so open and honest about the conspiracy. 'It was a burden for fans and developers alike, and not cool. We hope you all can put this behind you for good. We are working hard on 'Abandoned' and appreciate your patience!" The developer also asks fans not to harass director Hideo Kojima regarding the Abandoned message: "This will not be tolerated, nor is it pleasant."

Abandoned was released to relatively little fanfare in April 2021, but Silent Hill fans became convinced in the months that followed that it was a secretly disguised Silent Hill game (opens in new tab) The Blue Box An entire subreddit called Conspiracy is devoted to documenting the every move of director Kojima and Karaman. The studio announced last October that a rampant conspiracy had resulted in a team member receiving death threats (opens in new tab).

Development of Abandoned has been rocky. In March, Blue Box had to clarify that the game had not been canceled, as it deleted most of its tweets (opens in new tab) about details of the game, including tweets about an upcoming playable demo Further reports in June suggested that the project was in disarray (open in new tab), team members called Kahraman "duplicitous and changeable in his moods," and the game allegedly swung violently from concept to concept.