AKonamiemployee has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after attacking his boss at the office. The Japanese video game publisher and developer has had a mixed bag of successful and failed ventures in recent years, and those hardships have occasionally involved workers at the company. The most well-known incident will of course be the tension between Konami andHideo Kojima that resulted in the cancellation ofP.T.and the latter’s departure from the company.
Konami has also successfully created a wave of renewed interest in theSilent Hillfranchise, announcing in October 2022 the long-awaiteddevelopment of aSilent Hill 2remakeby Bloober Team. Along with that came the reveal of several other projects in theSilent Hilluniverse, including figurines, two additional new games, an interactive media experience calledSilent Hill: Ascension,and even another movie directed by Christophe Gans.
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Unfortunately, trouble with employees came to the forefront again when, on July 25, 2025, an unnamed Konami worker struck his boss on the head with a fire extinguisher. According to a report by Japanese website Asahi, at around 11 AM, the 41-year-old employee entered theKonami building in Tokyoand carried out the attack. A colleague then subdued him until police arrived on the scene to arrest him. The man’s boss, who also remains unidentified, suffered a head contusion. The employee claimed that he had been harassed and hit his superior with every “intention of killing him.” Given this admission, the man is being accused of attempted murder.
It’s unknown what exactly provoked the attacker’s actions, but the man had previously complained toKonamithat he was dealing with “power harassment” from his boss. The company concluded that there was no evidence of harassment, though the article states that “measures have been taken to transfer the man to another team” since August 2020. Given that this is machine translated from Japanese, it’s unclear if this means the man was actually transferred or if Konami was still working on transferring him after two years.
In addition to Kojima’s reportedly less than amicable departure from the company in 2015, there have been other reports from employees over the years thatwork conditions at Konami are less than ideal. Around the time that Kojima left, Japanese news site Nikkei published an article alleging that cameras monitored Konami workers in the corridors, those who took long lunch breaks were shamed, and people deemed underperformers got reassigned to work as security guards, factory workers, or cleaners. That specific story is several years old at this point, though there have occasionally been similar anecdotes about Konami in the time since. Hopefully workplace practices have improved overall, but the story of this one disgruntled employee attacking his boss after being harassed does not cast a good light on the company.
