Almost five years have passed since Konami started Metal Gear Solid VThe nuclear disarmament metagame, which assigns the gaming community the removal of all player-created nuclear weapons on the game’s servers. This week, players on the PS3 version of MGSV He seemed to reach that long-sought goal, unlocking a short scene congratulating them on a day when the character Master Miller says he “thought … would never come.”
Now, the enthusiastic players behind the disarmament are waiting to see if Konami will officially recognize their achievement and perhaps unlock some new content for the five-year-old game.
The long drive for peace
Organized MGSV Nuclear disarmament efforts have been going on for years, first through the now-defunct Metal Gear Philanthropy subreddit and more recently through the MetalGearAntiNuclear subreddit. There, players would rally to discuss the Forward Operation Bases foray by nuclear-armed opponents into MGSVOnline servers to steal and then take those weapons apart to reduce the world total count.
But interest from screwdrivers has been sporadic, and the effort has faced sustained opposition from self-interested players, encouraged to create nuclear weapons as a form of protection and deterrence in the game. Both Konami’s official counts (which the company stopped publicly updating years ago) and unofficial counts via a GitHub server scraper show historical disarmament progress either delayed or actively rolling back over time, depending on the platform. and the server (the PS4 and Steam versions of the game are still far from complete disarmament as of this writing).
For a brief moment, a scene like this was impossible to watch on a PlayStation 3.
“I think most people just gave up and the fun was over after such a long time,” Stefferp, a freelance virtual reality game player and developer, told Ars by Discord. “I think the whole thing is a huge missed opportunity, people were really interested in this nuclear ‘mini-game’ in 2015, but Konami’s interest in it waned over time and they were very reluctant to talk about it eventually.”
Gathering the band
The last sprint to full disarmament on PS3 began in March, when Reddit user TheHungHorse used the coronavirus quarantine as an excuse to start a Discord server that organizes a serious push among dedicated gamers. “At first, nothing was done because we just didn’t have the numbers. But slowly, our numbers grew to 60, 70 … It was touching that everyone joined for this goal. Me and some other members really bought a copy of PS3[of[of[de[ofMetal Gear Solid V]just to help. “
Eventually, some 20 staunch screwdrivers started a group chain of direct messages to coordinate their efforts and schedules. “We all disarmed at the same time over the past month so we don’t have to worry about people bringing the numbers back up to what they used to be,” TheHungHorse said.
“This time it was like a ‘right, let’s get this over with’ mentality, perhaps because the game is approaching its fifth anniversary,” Stefferp told Ars. “Teaming up brought that fun back, I guess.”
Thanks to group coordination, initial progress was swift, with a PS3 nuclear weapons count dropping from over 800 on July 10 to less than 100 in less than a week, according to the GitHub scraper. At the time, however, the group stumbled upon what theHungHorse suspects were hackers determined to keep the nuclear count high.
“Sometimes we would get the number 40 to immediately return it to 60,” he said. “So overall, it was a lot of patience and trial and error. Given that we don’t have access to the tools that are used against us, it really is a miracle that we hit zero.”
The unlocked cut scene that followed the disarmament of PS3, as published by Stefferp. Note the congratulatory list of usernames at the end.
Hackers aside, normal players also caused screwdrivers to have headaches. “I was … amazed at how active the PS3 player base remains,” Stefferp said. “We thought that taking nuclear weapons would be easy, but people would retaliate all the time [striking back against the player who had stolen their nuclear weapon]. It is an old console, but it is still used by many people. I think that’s great … 2006 hardware but it’s not irrelevant yet. “
The disarmament group also faced a set of “invincible nuclear weapons” apparently caused by a bug in the game’s server code. These weapons appear on the server as the property of players who do not have a Forward Operating Base, a logical impossibility that also prevents others from stealing and taking apart phantom weapons.
“My personal theory is that those people had nuclear weapons, and then they reset their saved data, which resets their FOB to zero,” Stefferp tells Ars (this, Stefferp suspects, that’s why the GitHub nuclear weapons counter has never shown a full fall) zero moment).
waiting confirmation
Phantom nuclear weapons or not, the disarmament group was shocked to see their efforts rewarded this week by activating a short scene announcing complete disarmament. “We knew we were getting closer the day it happened, but we didn’t think we would really do it,” said TheHungHorse.
Konami, meanwhile, has yet to confirm the community’s victory. “A nuclear abolition event occurred in the PS3 version of MGSV: TPP since July 28 Japan time, but we are currently investigating this matter, “the official Japanese Metal Gear account tweeted this morning.
That research may be warranted before players celebrate too much. This is because previous activations of the “complete disarm” hack scene were considered false alarms, once for PC gamers in early 2018 and again for PS4 players in late 2018.
“We can … we can confirm that the event was triggered while the nuclear weapons count had not reached zero,” Konami said days after the false PC disarmament in 2018. “We would like to apologize for the inconvenience and assure you that we will investigate the matter. as well as taking the necessary measures to prevent this in the future. “
Peace is the key?
Konami’s confirmation could also be more important than a simple pat on the back. This is because many players are convinced that disarmament in the game is the inciting event that will lead to unlocking new content in the game.
The evidence for this theory is circumstantial but difficult to ignore. In 2016, for example, Konami community manager Robert Peeler expressly said that “he would rather not stipulate what, if anything, happens to nuclear disarmament.” Peeler, who no longer works for Konami, recently tweeted that he is “[n]I’m not sure if / how Konami will celebrate, but if it’s legitimate, that’s great. Coming soon on that fifth anniversary! “
Even if MGSV it only has two chapters, data miners have also found a title card for “Chapter 3: Peace” hidden in the game files. Some have linked it to a series of three cryptic tweets on three themes by Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima in 2016. While no actual “Chapter 3” content has been found hidden on the game disc, some suspect Konami may use confirmed disarmament as a trigger to patch content.
The data of a title card extracted from the MGSV code that introduces a chapter that some believe can be unlocked after disarmament.
Such a lengthy and obtuse method of unlocking DLC would not be out of place for Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, known for his quirky gaming experiments. “I think there is definitely something to the matter of disarmament, otherwise Konami would not have to ‘investigate’ it every time it was activated,” Stefferp said.
TheHungHorse, meanwhile, thinks the actual trigger could involve disarming and then keeping the server disarmed for the duration of the eight-minute cut scene running. Then, TheHungHorse suspects, there could be “a secret scene playing instead of Ocelot saying ‘Welp, someone’s doing nuclear weapons again.'”
“For me personally, I just want answers to these questions. I want the old debate about MGSV“Cut the content to finish once and for all,” TheHungHorse continued. “For now, our next goal is to get nuclear weapons back to zero, but for an extended period of time to test a few things … For now, however, we all take a break. We deserve it.
“Also, there have been other fans picking up on what we’ve left since ‘Peace Day,'” he added. “I’m glad to see this game become relevant again.”
