Media Showed Kojima as Killer; Developer Announces Lawsuits
Hideo Kojima's studio, Kojima Productions, is considering legal action after the developer was falsely linked to the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Hideo Kojima, source: IGN, YouTube.
For the past few days, the world has been focusing on a shocking incident that occurred in Japan. The country's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot on Friday during one of his election rallies in Nara. The suspect was arrested at the scene and confessed to the attack.
As reported by Kotaku, the tragedy was used by Internet users to make jokes. According to reporters, some people began to compare the attacker to game developer Hideo Kojima. Fake news has gained momentum to the point that the image of the former Konami vice president was published on Twitter by French right-wing politician Damien Rieu, who signed the post with the comment: "The extreme left is killing.". Below you can see the activist's post, shared by user NoxDawn.
The man was most likely informed that he hastily took the joke for the truth, as the said message quickly disappeared from his profile.
I naively took a joke as information... I didn't think it was possible to create jokes about an assassination attempt on a person, but I made the mistake of not checking it before sharing. My apologies to Hideo Kojima and fans of Metal Gear - we read in Damien Rieu's published apology.
As it turns out, before the false information was withdrawn from the politician's Twitter, one of the Greek TV stations came across the message, which was later used during a news program. During the section about the attack on the former Japanese prime minister, a photo of Kojima was shown where he was incorrectly identified as the suspected killer (You can see the footage here).
On Saturday, Kojima Productions released a statement saying that it is considering legal action against the said fake news.
