In today’s edition of “terrible copyright law ruins everyone’s fun”, several Metal Gear Solid games will be temporarily taken off of digital stores until licencing for certain parts of them is renewed.
The public is, unfortunately, used to hearing this kind of news but it’s usually reserved for music or car designs in racing titles which cause these problems. For Metal Gear Solid, however, the problem is with historical footage.
“We are currently working on renewing the licenses for select historical archive footage used in-game, therefore, we have made the temporary decision to begin suspending the sale of METAL GEAR SOLID 2, METAL GEAR SOLID 3 and all products that include these games from digital storefronts globally starting from November 8th, 2021,” reads the announcement.
While the temporary removal goes into effect from today, no date is provided by publisher Konami for the return of these games.
On places like Reddit it’s theorised that the removal is happening today as it has been ten years since the release of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection which launched on 8th November 2011.
The full list of games and their platforms affected by this removal can be found in the list below. Konami points out that not everything here is available in every region so if it’s missing in the future it could be a case of the game(s) never being available in your country to begin with.
- PlayStation®3 METAL GEAR SOLID 2 SONS OF LIBERTY HD EDITION
- PlayStation®3 METAL GEAR SOLID 3 SNAKE EATER HD EDITION
- PlayStation®3 METAL GEAR SOLID HD EDITION
- PlayStation®Vita METAL GEAR SOLID 2 SONS OF LIBERTY HD EDITION
- PlayStation®Vita METAL GEAR SOLID 3 SNAKE EATER HD EDITION
- PlayStation®Vita METAL GEAR SOLID HD COLLECTION
- PlayStation™Now METAL GEAR SOLID HD COLLECTION
- Xbox 360 METAL GEAR SOLID HD EDITION: 2 & 3
- Nintendo 3DS METAL GEAR SOLID SNAKE EATER 3D
- GOG.com METAL GEAR SOLID 2 SUBSTANCE
- NVIDIA® SHIELD™ METAL GEAR SOLID 2 HD for SHIELD TV
- NVIDIA® SHIELD™ METAL GEAR SOLID 3 HD for SHIELD TV
Looking at this list and we have to wonder just how many people this will actually affect. Only GOG and Nvidia Shield are platforms that are still being used to any extent in recent years.
Speaking of GOG, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance was still available to buy on that platform at the time of writing. We have to assume this is some time zone discrepancy.
