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Blue Box Game Studios is not working on a Silent Hill game or anything connected to Hideo Kojima, studio head Hasan Kahraman affirmed in a new statement.
"I just wanted to do a really quick video to show myself, that I'm a real person," Kahraman said in a short video. "I'm not really associated with Hideo Kojima. I'm not an actor. I'm not working on Silent Hill."
Kahraman's statement came on the heels of another tweet from Blue Box again stressing that the "confusion and rumors" surrounding its upcoming game Abandoned are pure fiction. "We are a small indie studio with actual real people," the studio said. "We wanted to do a livestream with a Q&A [where] you can ask all your questions to clarify confusion and rumors. We just want to set expectations."
The studio said as much in a separate statement issued last week, which it published following a now-deleted tweet teasing that the final name for Abandoned would start with an "S" and end with an "L". This was perceived by many as a cheeky allusion to Silent Hill, which Kojima was originally set to revive on the back of the teaser P.T. before splitting from Konami, and which some fans have speculated is somehow related to Blue Box. However, as Kahraman and Blue Box have now repeatedly stressed, this is not the case.
"We wanted to set things straight," Blue Box said on June 15. "We have no relations with Konami. Silent Hill is owned by Konami. We do not have any relations with Hideo Kojima. It was never our intention to tease the name as Silent Hill. We sincerely apologize for this."
All of this culminated in a messy week of rumors and speculation fueled by a mix of mental gymnastics and what can now comfortably be described as bizarre coincidences. This web of theories was conveniently gathered in this Reddit post, which delves into everything from who follows who on social media, to arbitrary connections between colors and shapes in logos and trailers, to trademark archives. The so-called "Blue Box conspiracy" has also received its own dedicated subreddit – which has since enacted strict moderation policies to combat and prevent bullying and "witch hunts" in the wake of this rollercoaster of revelations.
Much of this stuff surfaced, or indeed was concocted, in the past week, partly propelled by comments from Geoff Keighley, the host of The Game Awards and a longtime friend of Kojima's, who said he'd be involved with the reveal of Abandoned. On June 17, Keighley clarified that he "honestly doesn't think this is what you guys think it is," but the rumor train was already barreling downhill by that point.
The sheer appetite for Silent Hill news contributed to the rapid spread of these rumors, and the fact that Konami recently teased and announced a new line of Silent Hill merch – which turned out to be a skateboard – only amplified this further. Kojima's history of putting on elaborate charades to conceal and announce projects, including the creation of fake studios and hiring actors for promotional material, added yet more fuel to the fire and made the whole scheme seem plausible if you could get your tinfoil hat tight enough.
We've been fielding Silent Hill rumors since P.T. was released and subsequently canned, but we've never seen a perfect storm quite like this, nor have we seen an innocuous indie game at the eye of that storm. At least, we hadn't until Abandoned came along. However, the studio's been pouring cold water on this kind of nonsense since April, when it first insisted that it's not three Kojimas in a trenchcoat.
In a Playstation Blog post also published in April, Abandoned was officially described as an open-world, first-person, survival horror shooter launching as a PS5 exclusive this year. It's not Silent Hill, and Blue Box is not a fake studio invented by Kojima. We should learn more about what Abandoned is in an official Q&A soon.
We do know that Kojima Productions is working on something new, and it may be revealed "quite soon" according to art director Yoji Shinkawa.
