Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima received the Industry Icon Award at the 2016 Game Awards, and he was actually there to accept it in person this year.
At last year’s Game Awards, there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding Kojima and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain publisher Konami, which was still his employer at the time. At the 2015 event, The Phantom Pain was nominated for Game of the Year, and it won best Action/Adventure Game. However, due to Kojima’s rather public falling out with Konami, he was not allowed to attend the event, and as such was unable to receive the award. Host Geoff Keighley revealed to the audience that Konami was not allowing Kojima to attend, and spoke quite honestly and harshly about that decision.
This year, though, Kojima has no ties with his old company, so he was able to attend the event with no issues. Keighley was excited to finally be able to have Kojima there, giving him quite a long introduction and even saying that one of his driving forces for putting on the show again this year was to give him the moment that he was “robbed of” last year.
Kojima himself decided to keep his speech on the shorter side, with no mention of what happened last year. Instead, he simply gave his thanks to Keighley and to all of his fans for their support, saying that because of them he didn’t lose anything even when he thought he lost everything.
Hideo Kojima’s upcoming game Death Stranding was also featured at the show with a new trailer.