Konami fumbles the ball ahead of MGS Delta's release, says the Fox Hunt multiplayer mode won't have crossplay with zero explanation

(Image credit: Konami)

We're just a couple weeks away from 2004: part 2, when Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater hits this August 28. If you've just bolted awake from a 9-year coma, that's the UE5 remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 that marks Konami's first real attempt to prove to fans it can be trusted to steward the franchise in a post-Kojima world (more on that in this month's PCG magazine).

Based on my time with it last August, it's a fanatically faithful remake of the OG game, but bad news: Konami said that Fox Hunt—the MGSD's stealthy multiplayer mode—won't launch until autumn. Now it's rubbing salt in the wound: when it gets here it won't have crossplay.

Konami dropped the news on the Japanese-language Metal Gear X account, writing (the following is machine-translated) "Regarding the online multiplayer mode 'Fox Hunt' for *Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater*, cross-play between different platforms will not be supported."

Which raises two questions. The first: do you think every Konami employee has been forced to memorise the alt-code for that daft delta symbol? The second: why? Perhaps I'm a spoilt brat, but I kind of expect crossplay in the big year 2025. For a game to explicitly launch a multiplayer mode without it feels a little weird, and certainly deserving of some kind of explanation.

The Boss and Naked Snake have a close, face-to-face moment during a fight. — (Image credit: Konami)

An explanation which, alas, we have not got. Konami goes into precisely zero detail as to why the game's multiplayer won't function across platforms. I've reached out to the company to ask if it can shed more light on the decision, and I'll update this piece if I hear back.

For now, we're in the dark, but players aren't psyched. "Massive L," writes one X user, prosaically, in response to the news. "This is pretty much a death sentence for any multiplayer game releasing in this day and age," writes another. Absolutely everyone disliked the news, in other words. We'll see if Konami can win them back when Delta hits later this month.

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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